by Dan Schiro
“I know you guys are buddies, Kangor,” Aurelia said with a shake of her head. “But it’s over.” She looked at Orion, her brassy eyes dull with fatigue. “You promised a drink if we came back to debrief. I need a drink, Orion.”
“You three need a shower,” said Koreen, sniffing. “But first you need food.” She turned back toward her desk to grab her datacube. “I’ll order the half-dead fish you like from the Palladium Eatery.”
“Fin & Tail?” Orion asked.
“Of course.” Koreen tossed her datacube in the air.
As she ordered, Orion and the others made their way past her desk and into his neat office. “At least it’s not another Ogga Food instameal,” he muttered to no one in particular.
Aurelia and Kangor slumped into the armchairs facing Orion’s desk, and Orion shuffled to his three-tier glass bar. He picked out the two bottles that he kept on hand especially for his partners, pouring White Vale brandy for Aurelia Deon and poxgane moonshine strong enough to peel paint for Kangor Kash. After handing off the brimming glasses, Orion chose a glass of Rumble Horse whiskey for himself. He sank into the familiar high-backed chair behind his desk, remembering the slugs of booze he and Mervyn had traded at the meeting where everything had begun.
“So,” Orion said after everyone had a chance to take a deep drink. “What did they ask you guys?” He shrugged. “Or rather, what did they try to make you say?”
Aurelia and Kangor glanced at each other, and the grizzled vycart gave the Exile the nod to go ahead. “After their ponderous questions about the E-tech?” said Aurelia. “The accusations were fairly concise. They said that Zovaco was a Dawnstar double agent. They said that he knew the assassination attempt on Corvis Stoat was coming, and that he coordinated the Dark Spacer attack on the Collective Fleet. Then Dawnstar took out the Star Sentry so he couldn’t be captured and questioned.” Aurelia smiled a sour smile. “Laughable stuff from our point of view, knowing what we know about who’s really trying to kill Zovaco. They also had a little show for me to watch, supposedly Zovaco Ralli pledging his life to the Luminous Path.” She rolled her eyes.
Orion nodded and looked at Kangor. “And you?”
“The same.” He guzzled a long swig of moonshine, then grabbed the earthen jug Orion had left on the desk and topped off his glass. “I’ve spent too much time with Zovaco Ralli to doubt him. And the hologram they showed me…” He seemed to think for a moment, and then he shook his head. “It was not him, not the way he moves.”
Orion sipped his biting whiskey and propped his chin on his fist. “Yeah, they came at me with all the same garbage.” He thought for a moment and lowered his voice. “Neither of you said anything about the… Guild, right?”
“Give us some credit, Orion,” Aurelia scoffed.
“Little friend,” Kangor said, shaking with laughter, “no one would believe us if we told them.”
Orion laughed with Kangor, and soon even Aurelia cracked and cackled. For a few much-needed moments, the three of them simply laughed at the absurdity that had evolved from what was supposed to be a straightforward counter-terrorism job. When they finally settled down, Orion wiped the tears from his eyes and downed his drink. “Okay, so what are we doing here?” He shook his head. “Is there anything we can do to get Zovaco out of this?”
Aurelia shrugged. “I’m the looks, he’s the muscle,” she said with a nod at Kangor. “You tell us, oh great leader.”
Orion laced his fingers together and considered it for a moment, and then Koreen knocked at the door and pushed it open. Orion could see a cart piled with plates of lockhovven sushi behind her. “Koreen,” he said brightly, an idea tickling him. “What’s the chatter about him on the datasphere?”
“Chatter?” she said. “About who?”
“About who,” Orion muttered. “About Zo!”
Koreen shrugged. “Not what I expected, that’s for sure.”
Orion massaged his temple with obvious irritation. “Care to expand?”
“Alright, alright,” she said with a wry grin. “It’s divisive. Mr. Ralli’s lead over that slug Curkas has evaporated, but there’s a lot of people convinced that the Union is smearing the man for trying to drain that septic tank called the Grand Chambers.”
“That’s good, that’s good news.” Orion straightened up, his mind racing as he tried to imagine how to leverage a nebulous concept like public support. “There’s gotta be a way we can work with that.”
“What about the ape?” Kangor suggested. “Perhaps Mervyn can do something.”
“He’s been playing the game for a long time.” Aurelia leaned back in her chair with a tip of her head. “Maybe someone owes him a favor?”
“We might need one crazy big favor.” Orion’s gaze drifted to the waiting sushi, his mouth watering. “Look, let me think about it, and I’ll get in touch with Mervyn as soon as he gets out of the hospital. For now, let’s all take a breath and just… eat.”
Orion rose from his desk, grabbing a plate of fire eel and a tube of gritty pink antidote off the cart. Aurelia, Kangor and Koreen all picked plates of their own, and the four of them headed out to the lobby. After luring Bully off the couch with a plate of fried tentacles, they pulled the lounge furniture together around a coffee table and shared dinner. Aurelia told old stories, Kangor slurped down huge cuts of raw fish, and Koreen busted their balls for getting marooned god-knows-where and making her worry. Orion said little as he greedily shoved rolls into his mouth and munched them down. This was the closest thing any of them had to a family meal anymore, and it felt good. When they had gorged themselves and drank down a good portion of Orion’s reserve stock, Kangor and Aurelia rose and headed for the door.
“I’ll be in the wilderness reserve,” Kangor told him. “Kapata Wilds. I need to hunt. Alone.”
“I need to hunt, too,” said Aurelia Deon with a renewed glimmer in her eyes. “But the point is most definitely not to end up alone.”
“Please, I’m begging you this time,” Orion said, seeing them to the exit. “Keep your datacubes handy so I can contact you.”
Aurelia grinned. “You know we’re good about that.”
As they passed through the frosted-glass doors, Orion turned to find Koreen retrieving her large leather purse from behind her desk. “Aw, you’re going too?”
“Damn straight I am.” She yawned, slung her purse over her shoulder and started toward him. “I’ve been here for five damn solar cycles, sleeping on the damn couch, trying to find out what happened to you all. I held off your lawyer and your accountant, those two rats. They couldn’t wait to total up their end-of-life fees.” She put her work-hardened hands on his shoulders and smiled, baring her short fangs. “Now that I know you’re home, safe and fed, I am clocking the hell out.”
“Fair enough.” A sudden heaviness in his chest made the next words hard to choke out. “Thanks for not giving up on me.”
“Never will.” Koreen slapped his cheek, rather hard, and swept past him. “And I’m taking tomorrow off,” she added as she breezed through the door.
“Well,” Orion sighed, “at least I’ve got you, Bully boy.” Yet when he turned back to the lobby lounge, he saw that the huge hound had fallen asleep on the couch, his belly bulging with sushi and a string of drool hanging from his copious jowls. “Okay… then just me.” He unclasped his smartcloak and started toward the locker room at the end of the hall where a much-needed shower waited. “Alone with my thoughts. My favorite thing.”
After washing the smell of the alien jungle off his body, Orion returned to his office. He put on his favorite Synthetic Symphony compilation and pulled down the bed hidden in the wall. He poured another glass of Rumble Horse, and for a while he stood nude in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down on the pinkish frenzy of the Hub from the 98th floor of Echohax Tower. When the Synthetic Symphony compilation ended an hour later, he still had
eight hours until the vast, dark panel passed over the city and the next solar cycle began.
With a sigh, Orion stretched out on his little-used bed and attempted to sleep. He should have been as tired as his slobbering Cane Corso, as he had not slept since he had passed out from blood loss in L’yak’s temple, and that hardly counted as rest. Yet the minutes dawdled by like snails, ticking away interminably on the old Earth-style clock he kept on his desk. Before long, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and headed back to the office locker room. He dressed in a tailored white suit with a white shirt open at the first button, slipped into expensive white leather shoes and fastened a glossy red A-within-O pin to his lapel. The hour had grown late, but perhaps not too late, so he took the executive tube down to the bottom floor of the monolithic building.
Orion found the old poxgane barber sweeping up his cramped shop when he peeked his head through the door. “Got time for one more?”
Skagg looked up with a start, his dull red eyes wide. Then he smiled, showing blunt yellow teeth, and leaned on his broom with his four hands piling one on top of the other on the shaft. “Back from the war, huh?”
“Looks like.” Orion said, slipping inside.
“You win?”
Orion shook his head. “Lived to fight another day.”
Skagg stroked the scar that ran down over his own right eye. “Come on, then.” He leaned his broom against a counter and spun a chair. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Orion doffed his jacket and sat back in the chair. Soon a razor scraped his cheek clean while two scissors and a comb went to work on his shaggy hair. The flurry of thick poxgane hands helped him relax enough to notice the nagging sense of doubt that had been with him since they had got home.
He thought back to his interrogation at the hands of the Union. He had to give the suits credit, they had tried everything in that clean, white room. A friendly, this-is-just-a-formality chat. Harder interviews with harder men, heavily implying that he could end up in prison himself if he didn’t confirm Zovaco’s Dawnstar ties. A few wink-wink offers regarding Orion’s bank account if he said the right thing. At one point they trotted in a temba nubu woman who looked like a stripper in a SpaceCorps uniform, so at least his reputation had preceded him in that department.
Had Orion said the wrong thing, was that what prodded him from his subconscious? No, he had kept a smirk plastered on his face and conducted a wise-cracking filibuster until their solar-cycle hold on him had expired. Then he had very clearly asked for Vlad of Longshore, his personal attorney, and they had let him go.
Orion tipped his barber double for working late and took the executive tube all the way up to the 199th floor. After verifying his credentials with a muscular durok in a fine suit, he stepped into the Orbit Lounge. The exclusive club’s open, minimalist-surreal design was almost entirely glass. Towering windows ringed a polished color-shift floor, and the circular bar at the center doubled as a slender aquarium for vibrant alien fish. The aquarium tables scattered across the main floor were crowded with executives finishing up late nights at Echohax Tower, celebrities flaunting their wealth and powerful politicians shaking important hands. Normally, Orion would have slapped on his best smile and used the opportunity to network with potential clients. Yet tonight he felt taciturn, so he ordered a Chillrend martini and found a small, low table by the windows.
As he sipped his smoking amethyst drink, he gazed out at the night. A blanket of wispy clouds had rolled in and turned the Hub into a colorful blur far below the Orbit Lounge, just as a layer of haze stood between his conscious mind and whatever it was that scratched at the back of his head. After combing over every detail of the last few months, his mind kept coming back to Zovaco Ralli. He knew Zovaco wasn’t a Dawnstar sleeper agent because the terrorists were just pawns in this game. Yet by the end of his drink, Orion had to acknowledge a creeping suspicion that the politician had been hiding something. What was it?
Orion sloshed back another two drinks in silent frustration, and then he sent a message from his datacube. A reply rang back almost immediately, and he walked out onto the gusty observation deck to call an aircab. After a short ride over the brilliant, bright arcology of the Engineers’ ancient city, Orion found himself in the warm arms of a woman and soon in her bed. They fell into a tangle of wordless passion, and an hour later, Orion finally slept.
As he slept, he dreamed. He found himself back on Khanpara Guha, training with the old durok, Crag Dur Rokis Crag. Dressed in rags, the two of them squared off on a dusty mesa holding wooden swords shaped from the twisted trees that dotted the wasteland. Two suns shone down on them hot and bright from a sky scorched the lightest of blues. They ran at each other and clashed, trading half a dozen strikes and blocks. Then Crag caught Orion’s arm in his steely grip and flung him across the mesa. Orion tumbled across the dirt and sprawled out just a few yards from the edge of the precipitous drop.
“How do you do that?” Orion spat as he dragged himself to his feet.
“Still, your body is too tense,” grumbled Crag, shaking his horned head. “You cannot fight an enemy while you fight gravity, air, the universe.” He waved his practice sword around as if these intangible enemies were the source of Orion’s bruises and welts. “You must flow through these things by letting them flow through you. Even as you fall, you fight the fall instead of flowing with it.”
“I’m trying,” Orion said with a scowl. He hobbled back into position. “I’ll try harder.”
Crag frowned. “Do not try harder. Try easier.”
“Fine, fine.” Orion took a deep breath, attempting to clear his mind the way the old durok had taught him. “Now come on,” he said, setting his feet. “I want another go.”
Crag shook his head again and cast his wooden sword down in the dirt. “No. We will work on your mental disciplines, this time Blooming Flower.” He sat cross-legged as a dry wind rustled across the mesa. “Perhaps your mind can be taught to go limp, even if your body cannot.”
Orion awoke with a start, tangled in silky sheets and velvety limbs. For a moment he found himself confused about where he was, when he was, and a name escaped his lips. “Kat?” He regretted it almost as soon as he had said it.
Short claws bit into his chest, and the feline body next to him stirred. “What did you just say?” Biz Tessia raised her head sleepily, the guttering candles that lined her posh bedroom reflecting in her catlike eyes.
“Huh? Nothing.” Orion disengaged himself and sat up. “I just thought of something. I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
“Really?” Her sleepy eyes opened a little wider. “Well, now that you’re back on the Maker Rings, I assume you’ll want to resume your regular therapy sessions.”
“Um…” Orion hustled into his clothes, the gears of his mind grinding into motion with realization. “You know, I’m actually feeling really healthy right now, really in a good place.”
“Orion, be honest with yourself,” Biz sighed. “You have issues.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” He threw on his white jacket and slipped into his fine leather shoes. “Look, I’m really sorry, but I have to go. I’ll call,” he added as he slipped out of her bedroom. “You know, to talk about feelings.” He barely heard her curse as he bolted out of her garishly decorated penthouse.
On the early morning aircab ride back to Echohax Tower, Orion fidgeted with giddy distraction as the pieces slid together. During the crash of the Star Sentry, Orion remembered grabbing Zovaco to protect him from the impact. The politician’s thin body had felt completely relaxed, ready to accept and redirect kinetic force. He also thought back to the way Zovaco had moved when they were fleeing the Dark Spacers. It wasn’t just that the politician had quick feet as they made their way around rubble and bodies. He was fluid, nimble, as graceful as LaVal LaVoy or Orion with a weapon in hand. Kangor was right too — the impersonator swearing allegiance to Dawnstar in the te
rrorist recording didn’t have Zovaco’s distinctive grace. Was it possible Orion had imagined all of this? He had to see one more thing to be sure.
Back at AlphaOmega Security, Orion voice-activated the hologram stage in his personal office. “Play Corvis Stoat fundraising event security recording, mark 7.2.”
Orion watched with his bloodshot eyes peeled wide. Zovaco stood on the stage in his gray suit, Mervyn by his side. The crowd cheered as Zovaco smiled and spoke of his plan to protect workers’ rights if elected. Then a bright pulse bolt screamed down, just missing Zovaco and drilling a sizzling hole in Mervyn’s leg. Zovaco stumbled back, Mervyn crumpled in pain. The security personnel swarmed in, and pulse bolts sizzled off-screen.
“Loop recording and play back at one-quarter speed.” Orion commanded. He watched it a dozen more times, then blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Play back at one-tenth speed.”
Orion watched it over and over. By the time the energy-gathering panel had passed over the Hub and the first rays of the new solar cycle broke across the city, Orion felt sure. Zovaco had stumbled back a fraction of a second before the pulse bolt was fired. The move was so expertly timed that it could only be the same training Orion had received from his mentor, the same training LaVal LaVoy had learned from her circle of dark masters. That, finally, was the real reason the Assassins Guild wanted Zovaco Ralli dead. He was one of them, or he had been.
Orion sat back in his chair and stared into space for a long while, stunned and angry that it had taken him so long to put it together. The doorbell chime finally snapped him out of his ponderous state. Who would show up unannounced at the office this early? Surely Biz Tessia wasn’t quite crazy enough to show up at his business. Bully woke barking on the couch as Orion burst from his office, and the two of them went to the frosted-glass doors of the lobby together.
Outside, Orion found Mervyn of Claddaghsplough leaning on his cane. The burly, gray great ape wore a pained grimace and a brace over his wide ribs, but his dark eyes looked focused and determined.