“Let’s see it.” Huido scraped a clawtip along the broken edge of the tile. The tiny brown crystals twinkled in the dim light. “Strange. Encased in the clay, whatever it is. Follow me.”
Ansel followed Huido through the kitchen into a hallway; at the end waited a coded security door. Huido blocked Ansel’s view of the keypad, but Ansel recognized the keys he pressed by the standardized tones. The warehouse door used the same equipment. He kept this information to himself, however, since Huido probably wouldn’t be happy to know he’d given Ansel access by accident.
The room inside was huge but bare, except for a long semicircle of rocks, a deep empty depression that filled most of the available space, and a bench littered with tools. Ansel spotted a portable com system, empty beer cans, and a half-assembled tape reader amid the mess.
Huido swept a section of the bench clear and directed the powerful beam of a work lamp on the half-buried crystals. He turned them this way and that, tapped them with a hammer, and used them to scratch various substances. “It’s no good,” he said, “I can’t identify these. We need an expert.”
* * *
• • •
Ansel stood nervously at Huido’s side in the tiny jeweler’s shop as the shopkeeper examined the tile again, this time under higher magnification. Huido clicked an impatient claw like a castanet.
The shopkeeper rubbed her ocular spread. “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t’ve believed it,” she said. “That’s painite, that is.”
“Painite? What’s that?” Ansel asked.
“Only the rarest gem in the quadrant.”
“Don’t they use it to focus matter-conversion lasers?” asked Huido.
“You’re a fella knows his gems,” the shopkeeper acknowledged. She handed the broken tile back to Huido.
“What’s it worth?” Ansel asked.
“Whatcha got there’ll buy you a new aircar.” The shopkeeper cocked her head to one side, a motion made easier by a Neblokan’s lack of shoulders. “Wouldn’t be looking for a buyer, would you?”
“Not today,” rumbled Huido, steering Ansel toward the exit.
The two hurried down the concourse to the restaurant. Neither spoke. Ansel was quiet because he didn’t know what to say, but he suspected Huido was too upset to speak; the huge being’s armor rattled like dried seed pods in a gale-force wind. When the doors of the restaurant closed behind them once more, Huido bellowed with fury.
“Liar! Cheat! Thief! I’ll boil him in tar; I’ll split his sternum and fill him full of lead! How dare he steal from me!”
“Hom?” Ansel’s voice trembled. “I don’t understand.”
“That slimy bottom-feeder! He found painite in the mine. That’s why he invented his pretty tiles, so he could smuggle it out and sell it to the highest bidder without cutting me in. I’ll rip his head off and stuff his corpse with entrails!”
Ansel couldn’t smother a smile. “Won’t his own entrails get in the way? Sorry, Hom Huido, sorry,” he said, when every one of Huido’s eyestalks swiveled in his direction. “You’re right to be angry, but what do we do?”
Huido’s larger claws lowered to the floor. “No point contacting Plexis Security. The inspector will charge us with smuggling, and I don’t have enough credits to protest my innocence.”
A crash from the main entrance! Between Huido and Ansel’s feet rolled a fizzing, spinning metal cylinder. A strong citrus scent filled the air.
“Get back!” Huido leaped forward, amazingly agile for his size, and swept Ansel aside with a claw, knocking him sprawling into a booth. He grabbed the smoking grenade with the other claw, and tossed it back. Then, like a punctured air bladder, Huido sank slowly to the ground. “Get rum,” he whispered. His eyestalks retracted into the gap in his armored head, and the giant lay still. The heap that was left looked more like a scrap heap than the vibrant being Ansel knew.
He’d said rum. Maybe it would help, maybe it was an antidote? But how could he get it into the prostrate Huido? Ansel had seen him drink before, a complicated procedure that required pouring liquid into a hollow claw, then stuffing it in the gap in his face where his mouth was located.
Ansel grabbed a bottle from the drinks cabinet, and hurried back to the Carasian. To his dismay, even up close he couldn’t figure out where the rum should go or how to get it there. He settled for splashing a thin stream of the amber liquid inside the gap between the two halves of Huido’s head, and hoped some of it would get into whatever he used for a mouth.
A metallic squeal from the kitchen pierced the silence, and Ansel jumped. The bottle fell from his hand and sloshed its contents in an arc across the floor. Ansel knew that sound. Someone was using a high-speed steel drill, probably boring through the lock in the access door leading to the service corridor behind the restaurant.
The drinks cabinet stood open; the right side, large enough to store industrial-sized casks of fermented beverage, was empty. Transparent tinted plas formed three tiers of windows on the cabinet doors, so it wasn’t an optimal hiding place. A clatter from the kitchen told him the lock had given way. The cabinet would have to do. Ansel squeezed inside, and eased the door closed behind him.
The heavy tread of booted feet approached. “You should set the charge,” someone whined. “I’m no good with explosives.”
With a jolt, Ansel recognized Carston’s voice.
“You don’t have to be. Why do you think we use optical detonators at the mine? Even an idiot can work them.”
Ansel shuddered. And that was Kraden.
Through the tinted window, Ansel watched both of his former coworkers scramble over Huido’s bulk into the dining area. “It stinks in here. You sure this stuff only hurts Carasians?” Carston asked.
“Yes! Shut up and give me that prybar.” A scraping sound, then a familiar tinkling crash, echoed through the tiny cabinet. Kraden was taking down the tiles.
He’d come armed with a drug that would take Huido out of the picture, so why did he need explosives from the mine? The tiles were valuable, but why bother to blow the place up? Wouldn’t that draw unnecessary attention, give Plexis Security a reason to scour its surveillance records? Kraden was a thinker; he wouldn’t take a stupid risk.
Peering through the tiny window, Ansel watched Kraden crack off and bag tiles as he worked his way down the wall, while a surly Carston, his face swollen and decorated in blue-and-purple hues, dumped a pile of equipment on the floor in the center of the room.
If Kraden wasn’t afraid of Plexis Security, maybe he was afraid of something else. Ansel closed his eyes and focused on the latest shipping manifest for Kraden’s special client. When it came together in his mind, Ansel “read” the figures off the sheet. One by one, he recalled the tile manifests, all the numbers clear and distinct in his memory.
Since the first shipment, the number of tiles shipped had been steadily decreasing at a rate of about 23%. It wasn’t abnormal for production to go down as a seam drifted farther into the earth and mining became more difficult, but it could put Kraden in a precarious position if his client had a quota to fill. Maybe Kraden had no choice but to deliver this batch of tiles. Maybe the consequences would be dire if he did not. And maybe, just maybe, Kraden’s client could be Ansel’s friend.
All Ansel had to do was sneak out of the drinks cabinet, scramble over Huido, and get to the com system in the Carasian’s apartment without being seen. Simple. Ansel hoped Ivali was right, and her “Providence” had a fondness for fools.
“The cable’s loose on this cap,” complained Carsten.
“What? Let me see that.” Kraden bent over the explosives alongside Carston, their backs to Ansel. This was his chance.
Carefully, he opened the cabinet and unfolded his slender frame, a bottle of wine in each hand. Carston’s head lifted.
“Ansel?! How the—?”
Ansel threw the bottles in
Kraden’s direction and bolted. He clambered over his immobile Carasian friend on all fours and slid down the other side. Reaching the keypad, he jabbed in the code as Kraden vaulted over Huido and gave chase. The door swung wide. Ansel darted through and slammed it shut. It shook on impact with Kraden’s body, but didn’t give way.
Kraden’s fist thumped against the door. “Fine! Stay in there! We’ll blow this place to bits with you in it!”
Ansel waited until Kraden stomped away, then plucked a food wrapper off the com and typed in the calling code he’d seen at the top of every tile order. “Is this Lord Lianjie?”
“Yes?” said an impatient voice. “What is it?”
“Your pardon, Lord, but I’m calling with bad news. This is Ansel, from the rare earths mine on Imesh 27. I regret to inform you that your shipment has been stolen.”
“You must be mistaken. I spoke to Mr. Kraden this morning. The shipment will be on a freighter in the morning, headed my way.”
“Sir, I wish that were true. If you’ll examine your call logs, you’ll see that Mr. Kraden contacted you from an offworld location. Painite deposits are running low. I must inform you, it appears Mr. Kraden opted to keep the last shipment for himself. Your tiles were rerouted to an unsuspecting restaurant owner on Plexis, for safekeeping. I’m sorry to say Mr. Kraden is there now, retrieving the tiles.”
“What’s the name of this restaurant?” growled Lord Lianjie.
“The Claws & Jaws.”
“I have associates on Plexis. I’ll send them to check out your story.”
“Please advise them to move quickly and exercise caution, sir. Kraden has already incapacitated the restaurant owner, and I believe he plans to blow up the restaurant to conceal his crime.”
“If Kraden has double-crossed me, my associates aren’t the ones who’ll need to worry. Your story had better be true.”
“I wish it weren’t, sir,” Ansel said.
The com clicked off, and Ansel closed his eyes. He’d done all he could. The rest was up to someone else.
* * *
• • •
“Hom Huido, it was a good thing the med-tech had the antidote to that gas.” Ansel looked shyly up at the massive being. “I couldn’t find your mouth.”
“That explains why I smelled like a distillery when I woke up. What were you thinking?”
Ansel blinked. “Before you passed out, you said, ‘Get rum.’ I thought it might help.”
“I was trying to tell you to get in the room. Waste of good rum. How did you—no matter.” Eyestalks bent. “You saved both us and the restaurant, and I have it on good authority that Kraden and Carston will be spending the rest of their lives as indentured asteroid miners in a lonely colony on the Fringe. How did you know the client’s com number, anyway?”
“I guess you never know what you’re capable of until life backs you into a corner and forces you to find out.”
“Hmm. Speaking of corners, my little corner of Plexis could use an assistant manager; someone who could double-check the books, keep track of shipments, watch over the help. What do you say?”
Ansel stared, a lump rising in his throat. After all this, Hom Huido was offering him a job?
The Carasian rumbled. “Tell you what; I’ll build you a separate apartment. We’ll put it at the end of the staff wing. What do you say? Will you stay here with me? I need someone I can trust, someone who has my back when things don’t add up.”
Ansel smiled. “I’ve always been good with numbers.”
. . . Truffles continues
Interlude
HUIDO’S EYESTALKS TENDED to drift, pairs straying toward where Sira sat, her face obscured by a waterfall of red-gold hair. Morgan doubted she noticed, her outward attention for the lines her spoon drew through the remaining sauce on her plate.
While inward? She didn’t shield herself against him, but there was an air of preoccupation he wouldn’t disturb. Huido’s doing, something unlikely to sink between those gently pulsing head plates.
It’d take more than a hammer to knock tact into them. Ansel’s numbers were convincing. A fee on their imported goods could ruin most, if not all, of the smaller restaurants. Huido?
“I don’t like it.” Sullen.
Morgan made himself lean back. “Which part?”
“You telling everyone.” Eyestalks milled. “Involving others in our business. Maybe Rose,” the Carasian conceded, then shook his bulk with an ominous rattle. “But Keevor? Smuggler scum? That ORDNEX!” A daunting focus—on him.
“They needed to know.” He turned over a palm. “You’re on the same station. Maybe together—”
“We go with my plan. You’ll take the cargo away from here.”
About to argue, the Human hesitated. There was something false in Huido’s bluster. Taking the truffles elsewhere helped only themselves, only this once. Why? It wasn’t as if the Carasian lacked empathy for the others. His hearts were in the right place—ask Ansel to calculate how much of the restaurant’s product went out the side door, into the appendages of those who’d otherwise have gone hungry.
Huido’s afraid and doesn’t want to admit it, even to himself. I recognize the signs, Sira added ruefully.
His wise Chosen. It had to be. “You’ve gone all in, haven’t you?” If the restaurant failed, Huido’s wives would leave him. “You can’t risk losing this cargo.”
The Carasian might have turned to stone.
Ansel twitched.
Morgan blew out an exasperated breath. “Fine. We’ll do it your way. Just—tell me you’ve another market.”
A claw able to snap the table in two waved jauntily in the air, barely missing the glassware. “I will in abundance, once palates are educated. Until such glorious times, my brother—” a sigh like rain on plas, “—I’m at the mercy of those willing to risk a novelty.”
Meaning The Salty Appendage.
Meaning Auord.
He shouldn’t have pushed Sira so hard. Shouldn’t have brought up Roraqk or Recruiters or the Tulis. Shouldn’t have come to Plexis.
Most of all, he should never, Morgan thought darkly, have agreed to truffles.
Huido needs our help. Somber gray eyes regarded him; Morgan suspected his thoughts hadn’t been private. “We’ll do it,” Sira said out loud.
“That’s the spirit!” Huido boomed. “More beer!”
“Not so fast,” Morgan countered.
He loses his family. We lose the Fox.
Trust me. “We’ve started something.” He hoped. Had to believe. Bad as Butter, that. “If nothing comes of it, we’ll do your way, Huido.” You could stay here—
An annoyed flick of Power made him wince.
Lips quirked, Morgan gestured apology to his Chosen before turning to his dearest friend. “Give my plan a chance first. There’s more to Plexis than a truffle-obsessed bureaucrat.”
Kindness? Sira’s eyebrow rose.
Or self-interest. Or both. Morgan shrugged and half smiled. “Stranger things have happened here—”
He was interrupted by a commotion at the entrance. Huido surged to his feet. “What’s going on?”
A staffer approached the table. “Hom Huido. Plexis Security is here. I’ve made them wait, but they want Captain Morgan—”
Sira rose, the ends of her hair whipping back and forth. “They can’t have him.”
Peace, Witchling. My Human stood, heart starting to pound. “I’ve the feeling this isn’t about me at all.”
* * *
• • •
Morgan revised his thinking when he saw who waited in the lobby of the restaurant: the head of Plexis Security, Inspector Wallace, no less, flanked by a burly Human constable and a flustered-looking Whirtle with tentacles clutching a noteplas. Wallace had indeed, on a few occasions, been after him in particular.
Perhaps for
better reasons than Terk.
The moment Wallace set eyes on him, he snapped, “Morgan! This is your fault. I want you to stop this nonsense. At once!”
“And if you aren’t paying customers, I want you out of my restaurant!” Huido heaved himself forward, claws raised, and the officials stumbled back to give him room. Those at the front of the line to enter the restaurant attempted to do the same. Those behind weren’t cooperating, resulting in a few collisions and an unfortunate odor.
Morgan settled the big Carasian with a look, then addressed Wallace, keeping it calm. “Inspector. Exactly what ‘nonsense’ would you like me to stop?”
Sira came to stand at his side. Silent. Watchful. Wallace glanced at her then away, dismissing the most formidable presence on the station.
But then he’d always been a fool.
14
THE INSPECTOR AND the others were tense, their motives and purpose as yet unclear, but Morgan’s calmness sent a signal. The hint of hope I sensed reinforced it. I made myself smaller, holding in my Power, damping down emotion. We’d faced far worse than this presumably honest, demonstrably ineffectual official.
On the other hand, we could hardly keep blocking the entrance to the Claws & Jaws. I turned to Huido. “Perhaps a table?”
An eyestalk bent my way. The rest glared at Wallace, doubtless why beads of sweat glistened on the Human’s forehead. A grudging, “If you wish.”
The Human constable perked up, but Wallace’s bushy brows met in a scowl. “There’s no time to waste. Captain Morgan must come with us immediately.”
“I trust this isn’t a problem with our ship,” my Human said, his face set in polite interest.
The Whirtle consulted its noteplas, muttering to itself. The other constable gave it an irritated glance and snapped back, “The only thing wrong is your scow’s still attached to our station.”
If he believed this would get a reaction from Morgan, I thought with contempt, he was stupider than he looked.
The Clan Chronicles--Tales from Plexis Page 43