Undercity

by Catherine Asaro

  Anger flashed in her gaze. “I forgive your offense, Major, because you brought him home. But do not overstep yourself.”

  “He ran away.” I had to speak even if it meant I lost the goodwill I had earned by finding him. “Doesn’t that tell you anything? Gods know, I can see you all love him. He’s a fortunate man.” More quietly I added, “If you love him, let him have his dreams.”

  I thought she would have me thrown off the grounds then. If a gaze could truly have pierced, she would have sliced me to ribbons. “If he ran away of his own free will,” she asked coldly, “why is he coming home in chains?”

  “Because he trusted too easily. He’s never learned to survive on his own.”

  “All the more reason he should remain here.”

  “He came home because he loves you all. But he wanted to weep and they weren’t tears of joy.” I was digging myself a deeper hole, but I owed Dayj. He had saved my life by bluffing Scorch with a water gun.

  Majda clasped her hands behind her back. “You take liberties I have not granted.”

  “You don’t strike me as someone who prefers pretty words to the truth.” Behind her in the distance, I saw people running down the lawn from the palace, including Ahktar, Dayj’s father. He must have tossed on his robe over his clothes without even bothering to fasten the ties. It billowed out behind him, flying in the wind like a cape.

  Vaj turned to watch them. “Everyone has their version of the truth, Major.”

  When Ahktar reached Dayj and Corejida, he threw his arms around them. Other people gathered around, two of them doctors judging by the scanners they turned on Dayj. A police officer knelt by Dayj’s ankle and began working on the manacle.

  “I do know this,” Vaj told me. “I will be forever grateful that you brought him back to us.”

  I couldn’t say more. I should have realized a few words from an outsider wouldn’t change anything.

  The general went to Dayj then and greeted him. Although far more restrained than her sister and brother-in-law, she left no doubt of how much she meant her last words.

  Jak came over to me. “I don’t know if he’s incredibly lucky or one of the most unfortunate people I’ve ever met.”

  I exhaled softly. “Both, I think.”

  X

  New Leaves

  Jak tossed my jacket onto the bed. “You want to carry this or pack it?”

  I stuffed the jacket into my duffle. “Both.”

  He wouldn’t meet my gaze. We had already gone through the penthouse twice to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything behind. Now we were stalling. I had nothing to keep me here. Dayj had told the police I acted to defend him, and Majda accepted it, which meant the city authorities did as well. They wouldn’t bring charges against me. Barred the opportunity to toss me in jail, Takkar was more than happy to kick me off the planet. I was free to go.

  Except.

  I stood by the bed while Jak paced around the room, checking for lost items. I tried to make a joke. “You’ll wear a path in this expensive carpet.” Ha, ha.

  He turned without a smile. In his black trousers and torn muscle shirt, he made a stark contrast to the white walls and tasteful holo landscapes. The holster strapped around his torso held a pulse gun snug against his ribs. Since the business with Scorch, we both went everywhere armed.

  I shifted my weight. The obvious thing was to ask for a ride to the starport. I opened my mouth, but somehow what came out was, “Leave with me.”

  Well, shit. What was wrong with me? Of course he wouldn’t come. He had everything here, money, power, influence. Granted, it was illegal, but Jak had never let that stop him. It did matter to me. He couldn’t live my life any more than I could live his.

  “You stay,” he said, his accent pure undercity dialect.

  “Took me a long time to get out.”

  He crossed his arms and his biceps bulged. “This is your home.”

  I wished he would stop looking so good. “Can’t ever come home.”

  “It’s my home.”

  “Make a new one.”

  “You make an old one.”

  To hell with the undercity terse inability to express anything. “I can’t, Jak. I tried to come home once before and it didn’t work. I’ve made a new life in Selei City. I want that life, not a past with so many ghosts and so much grief.”

  His jaw twitched. “I’m a ghost you want to forget?”

  “No!” I spread my hands out from my body. “You come with me.”

  “You stay.”

  We stood looking at each other, nothing left to say.

  “I have an incoming message,” the penthouse EI announced.

  “For flaming sakes,” I muttered. “Your timing honks.”

  “Do you wish me to play it later?” the EI asked. “It finished and I now have it in memory.”

  “Who is it from?”

  “It has no readable ID.”

  “Oh, that’s great.” I glared at no one in particular, because I didn’t have the words to tell Jak how I felt. He just stood there, and I knew he would never say how much this hurt, either. We made quite a pair, him and me, both equally inarticulate.

  “Major Bhaajan?” the EI prodded.

  “Project the message on the wall,” I growled.

  “It isn’t visual,”

  This just got better and better. People masked themselves only if they had something to hide. “One of Scorch’s people sending us death threats?”

  “I don’t know,” the EI said.

  “Just play it.” I was in no mood for breathy threats but we might as well get it over with.

  The voice that rose into the air was anything but breathy. Rich and deep, it made the hairs on my neck stand up.

  “My greetings, Major Bhaajan,” Prince Dayjarind said.

  Jar stared at me. “Gods almighty.”

  I couldn’t believe it, either. “He has no access to any mesh outside the palace. No way could he send me a letter.”

  “Major,” the EI said. “Do you wish me to play the recording or would you prefer to continue arguing with your visitor?”

  “You know,” Jak said, “that EI can be annoying.”

  “No kidding.” To the EI, I said, “Keep playing it.”

  “I would like to thank you, Major,” Dayj continued. “I am unfamiliar with public meshes, so please excuse my clumsiness if I break protocols. This is the first message I’ve ever sent.”

  “He sounds a lot better,” Jak said.

  “He does.” Dayj’s voice had lost its hoarse desperation.

  “I have had many talks with my family,” Dayj went on. “As a result, next year I will attend school, probably Imperial University on Parthonia if I pass the entrance exams. My uncle is a psychology professor there, so I can live with him and his family.”

  Holy freaking blazes. I gaped at Jak. “He’s going to college?” I wished I could have been a beetle-bot in the room during that negotiation with his family. “That’s incredible.”

  “Maybe they finally woke up,” Jak said.

  “Aunt Vaj isn’t happy with the decision,” Dayj was saying. “But she has given me the blessing of Majda. Her decision to accept it apparently has something to do with a conversation she had with you. Whatever you said, thank you.”

  Jak cocked an eyebrow at me. “You talking tough with Majda?”

  “I said a few things.”

  “You got a suicide wish, Bhaaj.”

  I winced. “Just ornery.”

  “I must go.” Dayj’s voice lightened. “I look forward to the future. Please also give my thanks to your friend, the man with the jeeper. May you be well, Major Bhaajan. I wish you the best.”

  Then the room was silent.

  “This is a good thing,” Jak said.

  I smiled. “Who would’ve thought?”

  He scowled. “It shouldn’t have taken almost losing him forever to make them wake up and realize he had to go.”

  “Sometimes you have to take risks.�
� I went over and clasped his hands, a gesture of affection unusual for me, to say the least. He looked flustered. I said, “Come with me. You don’t have to stay here, running your damn casino. You could do so much more.”

  “I like running my damn casino.” He didn’t drop my hands, though.

  “Haven’t you ever wanted to see new places? Travel? Go to the stars?” I knew from the spark of interest in his eyes that he hadn’t lost that desire. Wanderlust.

  “A whole universe is out there for you to conquer,” I said.

  His wicked grin flashed. “I would, you know.”

  Gods he was sexy when he smiled. “Worth a try,” I said.

  “Got no job offworld.”

  “Find one.”

  He laughed. “What, no offer to make me a kept man, Bhaaj? Damn, woman, you can afford it. Majda made you sinful rich.”

  I flushed. It was true, this morning a sum of credit even greater than I expected had appeared in my bank account. I just said, “Figured you wouldn’t want that.”

  “I don’t.” In a gruffer voice than usual, he added, “Makes a difference that you knew.”

  “Enough to come with me?”

  “You know the answer.” After a moment, he said, “Might visit, though.”

  He had never made that offer before. “I’d like that.”

  He spoke dryly, “Got Braze’s people after me. It’s a good time to fold up the Black Mark for a while.” His eyes gleamed. “Maybe open it somewhere else.”

  “Jak,” I warned. He had better not try that in Selei City.

  He laughed, deep and full. “I swear, those glares of yours could incinerate a man.” His smile became something gentler, much more frightening than his grin, something that almost looked like love. “Just a visit, while things cool down here. Later—we’ll see.”

  “Major, I have another message incoming,” the EI interrupted.

  Saints almighty. “Who is it?” I growled.

  “Chief Takkar.”

  “Tell her I’m not here.”

  “The chief is aware that you are here,” the EI said. “Also, the message is top priority.”

  Tough. I didn’t work for the Majdas anymore. I didn’t have to answer their police chief. Then again, this was Majda. Best not to piss them off.

  “Put her on comm,” I said. “Audio only.” Let her chomp on that.

  Takkar’s curt voice snapped into the air. “Major, you can’t leave the city.”

  “I’ve a flight out later tonight,” I said. “I plan on being on it.”

  “If it were up to me,” Takkar said, “I’d put you on that flight myself. But this comes from the Matriarch in her capacity as General of the Pharaoh’s Army. In other words, it’s an ISC order.”

  I stiffened. “Why? What’s going on?”

  Takkar spoke grimly. “Those weapons you found were slated for a Trader spy, part of an interstellar ring of weapons dealers. Which means this has gone from a personal matter to one of ISC security.” She sounded like she had bitten into a sour fruit. “In the time between when you found the cache and our people arrived, the crates disappeared. General Majda is putting together a team to find out what the hell is going on down there.” With a disgust almost as great as when she talked about Trader spies, she added, “And you’re on the team.”

  BOOK II

  Beneath the Vanished Sea

  XI

  The Grotto

  I had liked being in the army. It suited me, especially after I made the supposedly impossible jump from the enlisted to officer ranks. I liked being out of the army even better; I preferred to be my own boss. But my years in ISC had given me an education, a resume, and skills I’d never have learned as a dust rat. A life.

  I could have said no to General Majda. I was a civilian now. My reasons for considering the job weren’t only because angering Majda was a lousy idea; it also had to do with honor and yes, gratitude. Down undercity, you didn’t talk about emotions. Admitting them was weakness, and weaknesses got you killed. I couldn’t say how I felt about what the army had done for my life, but I could show it. Besides, someone had to provide a link between ISC and the undercity, and far better me than Takkar. So I went to General Majda’s meeting about the smuggled weapons.

  We convened in the Selei Building, a skyscraper in downtown Cries with a spacious lobby partitioned by glass panels. The tower served as a conference center, purportedly for any group that wished to reserve the space. Given that the only symbols in the lobby came from branches of the military, and that the tower was named after Lahaylia Selei, the Pharaoh of the Skolian Imperialate, I had a good guess as to what “any group” meant. The seal of the Pharaoh’s Army dominated the back wall, a striking ruby pyramid.

  The walls had smaller emblems of the other branches of ISC: the ancient sailing ship of the Imperial Fleet; a Jag starfighter from the J-Force, the elite fighter pilots of ISC; and the two crossed stalks of grain of the Advance Services Corps. My branch of ISC, the Pharaoh’s Army, had the longest history, six millennia of service to the empires birthed by Raylicon. As an enlisted woman, I had served in the troops fighting Trader forces, and as an officer I had led those troops.

  A receptionist sat at the gleaming counter in the lobby, a man rather than a robot, and he had my security badge ready. I rode a titanium lift to the forty-second floor. The conference center had glass walls, letting me see inside as I stepped out of the lift. Men and women filled the room, talking or drinking kava, most in green army uniforms, but some in Fleet blue, the russet of ASC, or the black leathers of fighter pilots. It didn’t surprise me that General Majda wasn’t there; she had probably gone offworld to ISC headquarters. I did see Lavinda, with the gold colonel’s bars glinting on her shoulders.

  Max, I thought as I walked into the conference room. How many people are here?

  Fifteen, he answered. Counting you.

  With so many officers involved, the smuggling ring had to be a lot bigger than just Scorch’s operation. I didn’t know anyone in the room except Lavinda. She glanced at me and inclined her head. I appreciated that; subtle, no overt attention, but an acknowledgement that I had shown up.

  She rapped a laser gavel on the oval table that filled much of the room. “If you’d all take your seats, we can get started.”

  The higher brass sat at the table and the rest of us took chairs against the wall. A woman in Fleet blue sat on my right, and a fellow in an unmarked shirt and trousers settled on my left. He glanced at me with a slight smile and I nodded, relieved I wasn’t the only civilian. Given the way he held himself, though, with the telltale upright posture, he had almost surely once been an officer. Majda made no bones about who they wanted to work for them.

  Unfortunately, these were also the people least likely to find anything in the undercity. Yes, they could walk the arid canals and map the caverns. But the dust gangs, cyber-riders, drug punkers, and everyone else in our complicated, convoluted population would remain ciphers, hiding, watching, avoiding, or mugging the intruders in their domain.

  Lavinda began with a description of what I already knew and added what they had found since yesterday. “Apparently this woman Scorch intended to sell those stolen arms to ESComm,” she said. “We don’t believe the Traders yet have the technology used by our latest generation of carbines or tanglers, so the smugglers were selling military secrets as well as weapons.”

  An angry murmur went through the room. I agreed. “ESComm” meant Eubian Space Command. In other words, the Trader military. Scorch had committed treason, and the moment she betrayed the Imperialate, I stopped seeing her as a civilian. She became an enemy combatant.

  I had seen the torture rooms kept by Trader Aristos, the pavilions where they took pleasure in making their slaves scream. Every person in their empire was property, everyone on hundreds of worlds and habitats, all except roughly two thousand Aristos. Those Aristos owned everything: people, government, industry, military. A few thousand of them couldn’t control trillions of p
eople with only brutality, and many slaves lived relatively normal lives. But none had freedom. If any group did revolt, the Aristos wiped out the entire population. Better to commit genocide than risk an uprising. ISC had sent me to stop the slaughter on one such world, but we arrived too late. Heat-bar sterilization. Nothing remained of the colony. No people. No plants. No animals. Nothing. Two billion people had once lived there, and the Traders had slaughtered them all.

  I hoped Scorch was rotting in hell.

  Lavinda continued, setting up the Raylicon arm of the task force investigating what was apparently an interstellar smuggling ring. Eventually she turned to me. “Major Bhaajan.”

  I straightened up. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Your assignment,” she said, “is to find out what you can from the undercity.”

  * * *

  The cavern was empty.

  The last time I had been here, crates had filled the cave. Someone had heisted them between the time when Jak and I helped Prince Dayj out of the Maze and when the Majda police arrived. Whoever moved the crates couldn’t have been far away during my shootout with Scorch, because they had grabbed the crates so fast. They must have witnessed the fight, yet for some reason they let me and Jak leave with Dayj.

  I studied the scrape marks on the ground where crates had stood the last time I came here. Max, can you analyze the erosion of these tracks? I’d like to know how long ago they were made.

  I need more light. IR wavelengths are too long for a good analysis.

  I turned on my stylus and the darkness receded. Better?

  Yes. After a pause, he said, Based on the sharpness of their edges, I’d say they were made within minutes after you left here with Prince Dayjarind yesterday.

  I rubbed my chin. These were the only tracks, which implied no one else used this cave besides Scorch. So why did I feel otherwise right now? I was sure I wasn’t alone.

  Crank up my hearing, I thought. It was quiet enough that the magnification wouldn’t hurt my ears. I stood listening . . . yes, there it was again, a rustle at the far wall of the cavern. Half-broken cones of rock jutted up there, some taller than me, others no higher than my knee. Plenty of cover.