by Mark Wandrey
“You mean besides your reaction just now? Your body language. Analysis based on your previous behavior and indexed for your racial type suggests a 99% probability you’re about to do something either dangerous or illicit. Since you don’t seem to be the type to randomly risk your life on a space station, I’m left with the latter as my conclusion.”
“Your pinplants seem to be working just fine,” Sato said peevishly. Rick had nothing more to add. “Fine, come on.”
Karma Station was many things to many beings. To some, it was a trading hub. Others considered it a good stopping point midway across the galaxy’s Tolo arm. And to still more, it was home to numerous merc pits, places where mercenaries gathered to negotiate contracts, celebrate successes, and sometimes mourn lost comrades. However, where you found mercs doing business, you often found mercs doing shady deals, as well.
“What are you going to do?” Rick asked as they walked. A pair of women in the hotel lobby looked up when Rick and Sato left the lift. They gave Sato a cursory look, but both did a double take at Rick. He wished Rick had stuck with the ill-fitting spacesuit as a disguise; the robe was too damned suspicious.
“Alexis Cromwell once said that for every legitimate merc guild contract issued, there were three that weren’t legally registered.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Almost nothing in the Union is illegal,” Sato corrected. “Most of the things that are involve rules of war. You can’t nuke people from orbit, no genocide, biological warfare…”
“Antimatter weapons?”
Sato cringed slightly. The Keesius-class ship he’d inadvertently activated had turned out to be a massive antimatter bomb designed to crack planets, so he knew the reasons for banning antimatter weapons better than most. He’d actually been working on a reactor… “Yeah, that too. A few others exist, like piracy and such, but there’s no requirement that a merc contract be registered with the Merc Guild. But outside a sanctioned contract, you don’t get certain guarantees.”
“Like?”
“Well, there are rules concerning surrender, and even targeting leadership. Sure, I think a lot of those aren’t followed perfectly, but still. The Mercenary Guild acts as a negotiating party between aggressors, as well. I sometimes think it isn’t as important as the Merc Guild claims. A lot of it is more akin to brand loyalty, if you ask me.” I feel the same about other guilds, too. If I could remember why those feelings were so strong, this trip might make more sense.
“Anyway,” Sato continued, “the lawless element extends to matters of trade, as well. Planets are free to make whatever rules they want, up to and including draconian, state-run religions, and all manner of murderous juntas. You can torture your own citizens all you want.”
“We studied that sort of thing in school,” Rick said as they maneuvered to the hotel’s main doors.
A pair of huge purple ursine Oogar flanked the doors, both in combat armor and carrying massive projectile weapons. Sato had noticed a lot more armed guards at establishments than he’d seen the last time he was there. When was it? He couldn’t recall.
The Oogar glanced at him with tiny black eyes as they exited and pushed through traffic on the promenade adjacent their hotel. There were hundreds of various races, many Sato didn’t recognize, others he did. “One of our own colonies is strictly authoritarian; Talus 211c.”
“Talus,” Sato said and nodded. “For a while, there was a very prestigious research operation….”
“Dr. Sato, sir? Doctor? Are you okay?”
Sato was watching the data scroll through his pinplants, exabytes flowing through him like the spillway on an overfull hydroelectric dam. Even so, he reviewed it all, compared, correlated, and identified what he wanted. The view outside the fifth floor showed the northern edge of the Ember Plains to the south east of the city. To the west glimmered The Great Shallow Sea, where fishing ships danced back and forth across its glittering waters. The university was in an area of Johnstown called Old Town, surrounded by some of the remaining settlement dating back to when the world was held by the Equiri.
A sound made him freeze between taking one data chip from his pinplant interface and inserting another. “Dr. Watanabe? What are you doing here this late?” The woman stepped from the hallway into the afternoon light coming through the window. “What are you doing in the database?” Her eyes took in the portable reader, as well as the stack of chips. “I don’t understand…”
“No, you don’t,” he said, raising his weapon and firing.
“Dr. Sato!” The voice held alarm.
He felt strong mechanical hands holding him, and his eyes focused again. It was Rick, and he’d pulled Sato off the main promenade and into one of the innumerable little alcoves, which often held a service kiosk, or just a place to sit. This one was unoccupied except for them.
Sato swallowed and squinted against the now brightly flashing blue eyes of his companion. “I’m fine,” he croaked.
“The hell you are,” Rick said and lowered Sato onto the bench that circled the alcove perimeter. Sato hadn’t realized Rick was carrying him. “You started spasming and would have fallen if I hadn’t caught you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sato said. “I just haven’t been sleeping well.”
“You don’t sleep at all,” Rick told him. “Whenever I check on you in the middle of the night, you’re just sitting on your bed, staring at the Tri-V environment display, your lips moving without saying anything. I think you’re mumbling Japanese, but I didn’t want to be rude, so I left you.”
“Not sleeping?” Sato mumbled. He narrowed his eyes and ran the diagnostics on his pinplants. The new ones made from a design that had just appeared in his mind one day were far, far more advanced than the standard Winged Hussars’ pinplants. Those were based on a design dating back to the Great Galactic War, created for some long-gone simian species that had been similar to Humans.
Standard pinplants sat just above the ear, lined up with the ear canal, on either side or both. Woven into the skull with nano-wires, they provided a good location to access both the temporal lobe, where short term memory resided, as well as the frontal lobe, which tied together many higher brain functions the pinplants augmented. It was connected to other areas, as well, though mainly for the monitoring of auditory input.
The new design was behind the ear, directly behind the ear canal, and tied directly into the Wernicke’s area, which dealt with written and spoken language. It was linked to the temporal and frontal lobes, too, but had major connections to the hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex, both areas associated with long term memory in Humans. The new design had made Nemo quite excited, but he’d never explained why. He’d just taken the new pinplant nano-infrastructure Sato had provided and installed it.
The pinplants said they were fine. Well, that’s good. Next he ran a feature not found in standard pinplants: real-time recall. He could play back exactly what he was seeing, thinking, hearing, even tasting. The playback showed him walking down the promenade, talking with Rick, when he suddenly stopped. Stopped and…nothing. He hadn’t thought about anything.
The image of the university lab was a fresh echo in his mind’s eye, despite the pinplants not showing the memory. No record meant the memory hadn’t fully formed in his cognitive center. Then where had it come from, and how had it gotten into his consciousness? It had been Talus. He was sure of it. But he’d never been to Talus. Had he?
Rick was still looking at him with his glowing blue eyes, no doubt analyzing his physical condition. “I’m fine,” he said. “I think it’s the new pinplants.”
“The ones Nemo installed before you left the Hussars?”
“Yes,” Sato said.
“They’re unusual, from what I understand.”
You have no idea. Sato stood, steady in the light gravity. “See, no problem.”
“Okay,” Rick said and gestured to the promenade. “Lead on.”
As Sato continued, he could feel Rick�
�s gaze on his back, watching. For the first time, he wondered where his new companion’s loyalties might lie and whether he was grateful for being brought back to life. You’re better off with me than the other copies of you, Sato thought. He’d gotten Nemo to agree not to bring the other clones to life. Only Nemo’s word wasn’t worth the flashes of light it took to convey them. Nemo always did what Nemo wanted to do.
An image of a Wrogul floated toward him as if out of a dream. He was screaming something.
Sato shook his head to clear it, then reached up to brush his hair to the side to cover it. Rick didn’t speak, so he must have bought the cover. Trying not to think about much except their destination, Sato led them toward the merc pit district.
“It’s funny,” Rick said as they passed the gaudily marked facilities.
“What’s funny?” Sato asked.
“I was a merc for more than a few years, but I’ve never been to a merc pit. Funny, huh?”
“I suppose,” Sato said distractedly. He was looking for signs of what must exist near any merc pit, especially in a relatively out of the way place like Karma. Once again, he didn’t know how he knew what to look for; he just did. What he didn’t notice was how many eyes tracked them intently as they passed.
* * *
Rick couldn’t quite figure Sato out. In so many ways, he was as knowledgeable and smart as any of the great scientists from Earth’s past. But he seemed to have the wisdom and street smarts of a 12-year-old boy from Terre Haute on his first visit to the Houston startown. He’s going to get himself killed.
Not long after Sato’s ‘incident’ on the ring’s promenade, he found what he’d been looking for. It looked to Rick like the door that used to lead into a merc pit or maybe a little restaurant. At some point in the past, there had been a fire. Space stations took fires very seriously, like any spaceship. Fires could devastate a space vessel in ways a terrestrial fire could never do.
Whatever the cause, some basic repairs had been done, though the storefront had never been reused. Now as he considered it, Rick had noticed a lot of empty storefronts, and not just in the merc pit area. He’d heard there was a small city down on the planet and wondered if it was in relation to an economic issue. Space stations that dealt in trade were usually immune from local economic fluctuations.
Sato leaned against the wall just down from the burned storefront and seemingly watched the crowds shuffle past. Rick took up a position a short distance away to limit the possibility of anyone noticing them together. His electronically enhanced hearing began to pick up sounds inside, and Rick thought he understood now. What didn’t make sense was how Sato had known to look for something like this. It didn’t fit with his behavior.
After a short time, an elSha stuck its reptilian head out of the crumbled doorway and looked at Sato with a single independent eye. “What do you want?”
“Thought we could do some business,” Sato said casually.
The elSha looked Sato over dubiously. Sato was dressed in a Winged Hussars-style uniform, minus the patches and name tape. Black coveralls weren’t exactly distinctive, but another Human might have noticed the green stripes down the arms and legs. “What do I look like, a data seller?” The elSha had successfully guessed Sato was a tech, or maybe a scientist. Rick instantly upped his estimate of the alien.
“No, I think you’re someone who can provide forged documents.”
The elSha jumped slightly, as if Sato had kicked him. Both eyes scanned the busy promenade for any sign someone was watching or listening. “What are you talking about, Human?”
Sato made a big show of looking over the damaged storefront as if looking for something. “I don’t see any sign of your business, so it’s not legitimate. You chose a former merc pit for your clandestine operation, which means you want mercs noticing. There’s a war underway between the Mercenary Guild and humanity. Do I need to keep going?”
“No,” the elSha snapped. “Shut up and get inside before a UCX agent spots you.”
Rick wondered if there was even such a thing as an agent of the Union Credit Exchange. As soon as Sato moved toward the door, Rick followed. The elSha’s eyes instantly locked on him, and the alien reached for a weapon hanging from a harness around his head.
“He’s with me,” Sato said, just short of the door.
“Go away,” the elSha snapped, glaring at Rick. Clearly his sense of a setup was being tweaked.
“Your choice,” Sato said, taking a credit chit from his pocket and flicking it like someone making a heads-or-tails call. The extraordinarily large red diamond caught the subdued light and flashed as it flipped and landed back in his palm. The elSha’s eyes followed the chit like a cat tracks a mouse making its way across the floor. Its tongue darted out, licking one eye.
Rick didn’t think an elSha could snarl and curse; he was wrong. The alien moved aside to let Sato through. Rick stayed close behind him.
The interior of the former merc pit looked no better than the outside. The distinct odor of burned plastics hovered in the dark room, lit only by a half dozen portable bioluminescent lights scattered around on equally portable tables. Only two of the tables held occupants. One had a trio of surly-looking feline Pushtal with their heads pushed together.
Rick immediately felt his anger rising at the sight of the Pushtal. He knew all too well what kind of business they would be involved in. All three stopped talking and looked at the new arrivals as soon as the elSha door keeper let them in. They scarcely gave Sato a look, but both immediately fixed on Rick as the potentially unknown threat. Oh, you pussies have no idea.
The other table had a seated GenSha and a Kaa. The GenSha resembled a bipedal bison covered in white and green stripes. The Kaa was best described as a huge cobra, with bunches of tentacles for arms, and a reddish strip around the front of its head instead of eyes. They were a rare race in the Union, not commonly seen. Not unlike Humans.
The GenSha looked up from a slate to examine the new arrivals with beady black eyes. The Kaa may or may not have been watching; it was too hard to tell with them.
“What do you need?” the elSha asked.
“Two Yacks,” Sato told him without fanfare.
“Not asking for much, are you?” the elSha said.
“Can you do it or not?” Sato asked.
Rick used his heightened sensory abilities to examine the room in more detail. There was a second door to the rear, which had probably once been the way to reach a kitchen, or maybe an office. For just a second he’d spotted something peeking through the crack between the partially melted door and the frame. It wasn’t enough to tell the species, only that they were being observed. Maybe security? But his EM sensory scan showed no high-tech observation. Everything about this stinks, he thought.
“Sure, anything is possible,” the elSha said, “if you got the stones.”
“You want it to just look good or be fully functional?” the GenSha asked, his voice sounding like someone rolling boulders over gravel.
“You the tech?” Sato asked.
“We’re a team,” the Kaa said in a low hissing voice like a knife passing through meat.
“Really?” Sato asked. “Fascinating. I want two functional Yacks, complete with account linkage. How much?”
Rick tuned out the negotiation part; that really didn’t interest him anyway. Instead, he turned his attention to his surroundings. He could see far beyond visible light now, and deep into the infrared and ultraviolet as well. His hearing likewise went from subsonic up into the high megahertz range. He’d known instinctively how to use all these senses from the moment he’d woken up to see one of Nemo’s big blue cephalopod eyes staring at him.
Using all his senses, Rick probed the wall next to the door he’d seen someone looking through. With a combination of hearing in the ultrasonic range and infrared, he could detect nine beings in the other room, all seemingly crowded around a table. The sounds were far too muffled and overlapping to tell what they were saying, but none a
ppeared to be watching what was going on near Rick.
“Half a million each,” the elSha said. “Pay now, come back in two days to pick them up.”
Rick turned his attention back to Sato, who was shaking his head.
“A million each,” Rick countered, drawing a low hiss from the Kaa, “but we wait for them here.”
“We can’t—” the elSha started to say.
“Fine,” the GenSha interrupted. “Let’s see the chits.” Sato reached into a bag over his shoulder, accessed the metallic case that held their money, and drew out another one-million-credit chit, then held the two up, one in each hand. For further effect, he touched the tiny control on each chit.
Rick had heard about this feature; an internal illumination within the chit came on, throwing light through the red diamond embedded in the center. He’d never had his hands on a million-credits in any form, let alone a million-credit chit. The light seemed like pure swagger. Whoever at the UCX had decided to include the feature had had a flare for the dramatic. The effect was stunning, throwing little needles of red light in all directions like a chandelier. Every eye in the room stared at the chits. Rick noticed the naked greed in the hungry expressions of the three Pushtal.
“You must be really desperate,” the Kaa hissed.
“That’s none of your concern, my friend,” Sato said, then pocketed the chits.
“Pretty brave of you, wandering into a place like this with a pocket full of credits,” the elSha added.
“You think so?” Rick asked.
The elSha turned and saw Rick’s intensely glowing blue eyes staring directly at him. The reptilian might be part of a hardened group of counterfeiters; however, he still took an unconscious step back.
“You don’t want to anger my friend,” Sato said with a disarming smile.
“What in entropy is that thing?” Rick heard the Kaa whisper to its GenSha companion.
“Too small for one of their cursed CASPers. Too small by far. Some kind of bot. Reminds me of images of the old Peacekeeper bots I saw once.”