The Moreau Quartet, Volume 2

by S. Andrew Swann

  “Like what?” As if the aliens weren’t enough. What the hell could take precedence over that in the Agency’s agenda?

  “You should know. We had a tracking device on you all that time. RF, audio, limited video . . .”

  It began to sink in, exactly what that meant.

  The Bronx.

  The entire military setup. Evi had waltzed through all of it, handed it all to the Agency.

  It must have shown in her expression because Sukiota nodded. “I see you do know what I’m talking about. That’s why I’m here, really. I resurrected your file, and I have to release you, but I’m retiring you. You’re not going to interfere with any future operations.”

  “I’m not—”

  “No, you’re not, even though I think you have an inclination otherwise; it would be embarrassing. And since it would be inconvenient to threaten you—” Sukiota tossed the evidence bag at Evi. It sprung open on the foot of the bed.

  Evi leaned over on her crutch, grabbed the end of the bag and upended it. Out fell a pair of velvet-lined handcuffs. The same ones she had liberated from Diana’s bedstand. They still had a splattering of blood on them from the veep.

  “It would be very nice for Diana Murphy if you led a nice quiet life as Eve Herman from now on.”

  Sukiota left her.

  Evi stared at the cuffs.

  • • •

  When Evi hobbled through the threshold of Diana’s loft, she was the recipient of a shocked expression, then of some very tall hugs. The reunion was so teary that it took nearly ten minutes before either of them was close to being coherent.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” Diana said, wiping her eyes.

  “I never thought I’d see anyone again,” Evi said. “Can I sit? The leg’s still kind of bad.”

  Diana helped her over to the couch, peppering Evi with questions. How was she? What happened?

  Evi shushed her. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed Diana until then, how she had worried. She finally told Diana everything.

  Diana’s reaction was unexpected. “Damn, until now I thought the whole thing was some kind of silly hoax.”

  “What was a hoax?” Evi asked. She hadn’t expected to be believed so readily.

  “The broadcast—”

  “What broadcast?”

  “That’s right, you’ve been incommunicado. I recorded it. I’ll try and find the ramcard . . .”

  Diana moved up and switched on her comm. She sifted through the pile of ramcards as the thing warmed up. Then she inserted the card and fell back next to Evi on the couch.

  “I really missed you,” Diana whispered.

  Evi stroked Diana’s hair, for the first time with her left hand, and watched the comm. There, centered in a frame that was obviously shot from a hand-held camera was David Price.

  Behind him was a familiar-looking cargo hauler, and lined up by the end of the trailer behind Price, were four blubbery-white aliens. Evi watched as David got very chummy with Corporal Gurgueia. The Jaguar was holding an AK-47.

  “They hijacked the damn truck,” Evi whispered.

  Diana whispered into Evi’s ear. “What?” Evi could feel the warmth of her breath.

  “They hijacked the damn truck!” Evi shouted, smiling from ear to ear. They had done it. By everything that was holy, they’d completed the objective . . .

  She realized that she was being unreasonably happy. Sukiota had told her, almost point blank, that the shit was about to hit the fan.

  Even so, Evi couldn’t help grinning. It was a small battle, but she had won it.

  They had won it.

  A battle, but the war was still out there.

  Evi hit the mute on the remote sitting on the table in front of her. Then she hugged Diana back. She was free. Sukiota had retired her, and now she owed her allegiance to no one.

  Evi looked up into Diana’s human eyes and realized that that wasn’t quite true. She also realized that she hadn’t worn sunglasses or contacts for nearly two weeks.

  “Diana.”

  “Mmm?”

  Right now Evi was holding Diana about as close as she could while staying a separate person. She finally had choices. If she wanted, she could divorce herself from everything the Bronx would bring.

  “You know,” Evi told Diana, “I’ve become unreasonably close to you in a short time.”

  “Feeling’s mutual.”

  Evi had choices, but Sukiota had pressed the point home that, if she chose not to remain aloof, she would drag along someone she loved. “I have a decision to make.” Evi whispered. “One I can’t make without you.”

  “Later,” Diana said, kissing her.

  SPECTERS OF THE DAWN

  Dedication:

  This book is dedicated to the Cajun Sushi Hamsters, who saw the first one.

  Acknowledgments:

  I would like to thank the members of the Cleveland SF Writer’s workshop who looked over this: John; Jerry; Geoff; Maureen; Charlie; Becky; Mary. I would like to stress that nothing in this book is their fault.

  SPECTERS OF THE DAWN

  Dedication:

  This book is dedicated to the Cajun Sushi Hamsters, who saw the first one.

  Acknowledgments:

  I would like to thank the members of the Cleveland SF Writer’s workshop who looked over this: John; Jerry; Geoff; Maureen; Charlie; Becky; Mary. I would like to stress that nothing in this book is their fault.

  Chapter 1

  It was a clean sweep for October—the fourth Friday in a row that Angelica Lorenzo y Lopez wanted to tell her boss to grease his head and go pearl diving for hemorrhoids. Her shift was a half hour into nirvana and they could have flushed the whole place for all she would care. Ralph’s Diner was dead in the water. Half an hour waiting for Judy to show up to relieve her, and Angel hadn’t waited on one effing table.

  Her greaseball boss, Sanchez, was sitting in his little yellowing manager’s office, peering through his little one-way mirror at his nickel-and-dime empire as if he was too lordly to cover for Judy. Angel thought of giving the finger to the mirror. She admired her self-control for not giving in to the temptation.

  Judy was late every effing Friday and Sanchez gave no never mind every time Angel complained. Angel had decided that it must be one of two things—either Judy was going for joyrides in Santa’s lap back in the manager’s office, or it was because Angel was the only nonhuman who worked in the place.

  Probably both.

  A restaurant in the Mission District, of all places, and Angel was the only moreau serving tables. And Sanchez wondered why business sucked.

  And boy, did business suck.

  There were a total of three, count them, three whole people in the place. One was a regular, one of the street people who came in for coffee every afternoon. He was an old graying rodent with thinning fur and naked spotted-pink hands that shook as he drank his one, count it, one cup of coffee. In the back sat a small black-and-gray striped feline who was slowly shredding a bacon cheeseburger—a pink’s food, but the cat didn’t seem to mind. The cat’s ribs showed under his fur, and Angel tagged him as a recent immigrant who’d probably never seen real human food.

  Those two, and her. A rat, a cat, and a rabbit. For once, at a hundred and twenty centimeters—not counting ears—Angel was the biggest one in the room. Ralph’s was so empty you could land a ballistic shuttle down the checkerboard linoleum aisle.

  From the looks of things she didn’t even have a reasonable expectation of getting a tip.

  During Angel’s third glance at the clock, Judy finally showed.

  “About time, pinky,” Angel said as Judy ran through the front door, out of the fog.

  “Don’t harass me today. I’ve had enough sh—”

  Angel hopped down off the stool she’d been sitting on. She c
ould hear Judy trying to quiet her labored breathing, and Angel’s nose told her that the moisture on Judy’s face was more sweat than condensing fog. Judy had rushed to get here more than forty-five minutes late.

  Angel’s heart bled. “I might miss the whole first quarter—”

  “I’m sorry about your football game.”

  “Yeah, right.” Angel stretched to remove her denim jacket from the coatrack.

  “You’d want me to risk my life on those roads—” Judy started.

  “Don’t do me no favors, pinky.” Angel stormed out the door without bothering to clock out.

  Angel had little sympathy. The pink wench had a car, while the poor ol’ morey rabbit had been doing without wheels since she’d sold her ancient prewar Toyota to cinch the money to move to this burg. Somehow, this poor old lepus pedestrian was always on time—

  Except, of course, when some human woman goes and makes her late. Angel sighed as she pushed through the thickening fog on Howard Street. All those moreaus who weren’t eating at Ralph’s were probably at the game or at some bar that had a holo feed from the action. She, unfortunately, was due for the latter. Tickets for Earthquakes games were at a premium that she just couldn’t afford.

  Her destination was a little bar nestled in the newest part of the coast south of Market Street, The Rabbit Hole. Unfortunately, Ralph’s wasn’t on the coast. Angel had thought she’d have the time for a nice leisurely walk—she should have assumed that Judy would be late again and scouted a game cast that was closer by.

  It was a rare bar that didn’t charge a cover that rivaled the ticket prices. The NFL would have had a monopolistic conniption, but the Non-Human League didn’t have much legal clout, and was probably grateful for the exposure.

  She didn’t have much of a choice if she was going to be in time for the game. She took a deep breath, soggy with fog, and started running.

  Small Angel was, but she was a genetically engineered rabbit whose great-grandparents had been designed for combat as part of the Peruvian infantry. The musculature on her thighs was half again as broad as her hips, and her feet were as long and as broad as her forearms. A few humans thought lepine moreaus were funny-looking or cute—but with rare exceptions, they were the fastest infantry ever to come out of the gene-labs.

  She bolted down Howard at full speed, with barely three meters of visibility, telling herself that it wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

  Even as she thought it, a band of ratboys emerged in front of her. The fog sucked up sound and smell as well as light, so she had no time to stop when she realized they were there. She was leaping over their heads before they had time to realize she was bearing down on them. She retreated down a steep section of hillside, letting the fog soak up their curses.

  She tried to pace herself so she hit the cross streets with the lights. She only had one close call with a remote driven van that freaked when she appeared in front of it. She left the Aeroline van with its horn blaring, hazards going, and its collision avoidance program absolutely convinced it had hit something.

  She made the trip in less than ten minutes. It was five to six when Angel got to The Rabbit Hole, to find it almost as empty as Ralph’s. One table of moreaus, two feline, two canine, and a fox. That was it.

  “Wha?”

  The answer was on the holo behind the bar. Angel walked up, mesmerized. On the holo was the president of the United States. He was in the process of blaming the latest run of interspecies rioting on aliens from Alpha Centauri.

  “Shit.”

  Angel climbed on to a seat in front of the bar and watched President Merideth do his shtick. It was a lost cause.

  “Shit.”

  She’d been looking forward to the game all week. Frisco vs. Cleveland, and she wasn’t even going to see so much as one down. She twitched her nose and said, “Ain’t fair. Bet he’d wait till the end of the game if it was the N-effing-L.”

  She waved the bartender over. He was a moreau rabbit, but his fur was white as opposed to her spotted tan. She ordered a Corona and lime and closed her eyes. Yeah, she’d just missed a crowd of moreys. The scents of a dozen species still hung in the bar’s air along with the perfume of a like number of beers that had christened the bar in the past hour. A rich, empty smell.

  Angel chugged the Corona and ordered another.

  Another boring weekend loomed on the horizon. Home with Lei, or more likely, alone. Lei always seemed to find things to do with her free time. Things that generally blew more capital than Angel could afford. Sure, Lei was willing to pay Angel’s tab for an evening out—

  But Angel was never comfortable with that. She’d stay home and probably vegetate in front of the comm watching the latest news reports of the fighting in New York and LA.

  Around the fourth Corona the bartender’s whiskers sat at a slightly condescending angle. “What can I do for you, Miss?”

  “Refill me.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” It irritated Angel to notice that the bartender’s voice held no trace of the slight lisp normal for a lepus. Almost sounded human.

  “Ain’t driving, and the game got zeroed.” She pushed her glass at him. “Nothing better to do.”

  The bartender shrugged and bent over behind the bar.

  Angel stepped up on the seat so she could lean over the bar and add, “Find a lime that doesn’t taste like a used rubber.”

  The bartender shoved another Corona at her while, on the holo, Merideth began to invoke the names of the Joint Chiefs and several leading scientists.

  Angel snorted and sipped her drink.

  Preempted by aliens. Great. Angel was effing sick of aliens. She had hoped the media would have gotten over its alienitis over the course of the summer. Hell, everyone and their brother had been milking the story since January.

  Still no end in sight.

  So the CIA or the FBI or someone finds a bunch of white blubbery things nesting under the Nyogi tower in Manhattan. Even if the MannSatt news service had done a God-help-us live broadcast from an alien “lair” under the Nyogi tower two months before Bronx artillery zeroed the building. So what? Even if they come from another planet, it’s better than letting the Japs run things, right? Look what happened to them.

  But it kept coming, aliens, aliens, aliens. It couldn’t be escaped even if you killed the comm, because that effing huge white-dome alien habitat they built over the ruins of Alcatraz was the most prominent thing on the Frisco skyline.

  So what are we going to do? Go to war with a planet a few light-years away?

  Talk about unreal.

  Tabloid stuff, but it was tabloid stuff that was getting hard news coverage. After a half century of isolationism, it seemed that the U.S. had found a new evil empire. Leaks from the blessed U.S. government made the aliens look like some sort of interstellar covert action experts that were doing the kind of political destabilization games that the CIA used to excel at—or said it excelled at, anyway.

  All supposed to keep anyone from getting off this rock.

  “But why,” she mumbled. “It’s such a lovely planet.”

  Personally, Angel thought Merideth was just grabbing at anything that gave him even a remote hope of reelection. Or, failing that, of leaving office without becoming the most despised president since H. Ros—

  Angel felt the hackles rise on the back of her neck, under the collar of her denim jacket. She looked up the bar and saw that the bartender was gone.

  She smelled a pink smell.

  “One furball left. Seems upset about something . . .” A human voice, behind her.

  No, Angel thought to herself, don’t turn around. The bartender was right, you’ve had too much to drink.

  Did everyone else just up and leave?

  “Wassa matter, something wrong with our President?” Another human spoke.

  The
Rabbit Hole was a morey hangout. Why’d pinks have to walk in and fuck with her? They didn’t hassle the other moreys. She would’ve heard that.

  She tried to ignore them. Perhaps they’d leave.

  “Think he’s bein’ disrespectful.” The first voice. How many were there? Angel should have been able to gain a rough estimate from their smell, but stale lime was flavoring everything.

  And, damn it, they couldn’t even get her gender right. Just because she didn’t have globs of fat on her chest like a human woma—

  “Talking to you!” said a third pink with the ugliest bass rumble excuse for a voice that Angel had ever heard. A hand grabbed her shoulder and spun her around on the bar stool. Her drink flew out of her hand, splashing on the legs of the nearest human.

  Three young human males. Hispanic, black, and anglo. She was the only morey left in the bar.

  The three closed in around her, a wall of jeans, leather, and hairless flesh. Even the heads. They were all shaved totally bald, down to the eyebrows.

  The baldness meant one of two things. Either they were some rabid prohumanists who’d taken the morey slang term pink—meaning hairlessness—to heart and depilatoried their whole bodies. Or they were Hare Krishnas.

  They weren’t chanting.

  The anglo pink had his hand on her shoulder. He’d been the one she’d doused with Corona. The sleeves of his jacket were torn off, revealing one bicep tattooed with a flaming sword. The glass she’d been drinking from rested by one of his boots. He raised his foot and placed it on top of the glass. A second later there was the gunshot sound of the glass giving way.