by Rick Partlow
When Caesar returned, he was trailed by two men, Asians by appearance, if they’d been born that way, and likewise identical twins with the same caveat. They didn’t have a single dark hair out of place between them, and shared a look of agelessness that could have been the gifts of good genes, the gifts of rich parents or the work of restruct surgeons. Their faces were narrow but not sharp-edged, their eyes darkly intelligent with what I thought was a spark of humor behind them, something you didn’t usually find in a crime boss. They were also dressed alike, in loose, belted tunics and matching plaid kilts, which was something you didn’t see every day.
“You wished to speak with us,” the one on the left said, his voice harsh and choppy and slightly high-pitched. He stood with his arms crossed, and his brother matched his stance exactly.
“Yes,” I said, coming to my feet. “I’m Randall Munroe…”
“Yes, yes, we know who you are,” the brother doing the talking made a “move-along” gesture impatiently. “If we didn’t, you’d be dead already. We grant you this audience as a sign of respect for Monsieur Damiani. Now say your piece, for we have business to attend to.”
Okay, to hell with the niceties, then.
“The situation here is untenable, gentlemen,” I said bluntly. “You’re basically at war and no business is getting done. My employer is unhappy.” I cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not too happy myself. Innocent civilians are being slaughtered in the cross-fire between the bratva Skingangers and these mercenaries you’ve brought in. You need to reach a peaceful accommodation with Alexi.”
“What does your employer care about civilians, innocent or otherwise?” The Sung Brother’s tone was scornful, the look on his face skeptical. “And why should we?”
“Because when the Patrol and the military hear about it,” I replied, “Savage/Slaughter is going to have to withdraw their troops or they’ll lose their charter. You’re going to be outgunned against the Skingangers, and they’re not even your real enemy.”
“We have millions of dollars’ worth of stolen weapons that say otherwise.”
“The Skingangers didn’t steal your off-world weapons caches.” I paused, looking into those dark eyes and wondering just how frank I should be. “Tell me something, do you know where Captain Marquette is?”
That rattled them both, though they tried not to show it. At least they didn’t try to deny it.
“Not currently,” he said smoothly, covering his discomfort well. “I suppose it would be fruitless and pointless to wonder how you came to find out about him.”
“You don’t think that a man like Monsieur Damiani keeps an ear to the ground for reports of such things?” I asked him, cocking my head to the side like he’d said something incredibly stupid. “You don’t think he understands the destabilizing effects things such as this could have?”
“Perhaps,” Sung interjected, eyes narrowing, “he wishes to make an offer himself for the items Captain Marquette has to sell?”
“Of course.” I smiled thinly, without any sort of good feeling behind it. “His offer is your continued existence both as a business concern and as living, breathing human beings. For this consideration, he wants everything you have, including Captain Marquette’s whereabouts.”
The two men looked at each other, real fear sparking behind their eyes, but also anger.
“Surely he can’t expect us to give up the chance to broker such a deal with no remuneration!” There was much righteous indignation behind the words, and also much bluster. “We’ve lost a good deal of money to the bratva with their Skinganger thugs and their pirates raiding our storage dumps…”
“I told you,” I interrupted, “the bratva aren’t the ones who’ve been taking your weapons. They don’t have the resources either to do it themselves or to hire others. They’re being set up to take the blame to divert your attention.”
“Forgive the intrusion.” The voice was deep and sonorous and almost hypnotically pleasant. It came from the head of the stairs, through the door the Sung Brothers had emerged out of earlier. “But I understood we have a visitor.”
The man was, for want of a better word, perfect. His face reminded me of a Michelangelo sculpture come alive, with wavy, blond hair and eyes of a brilliant blue. He wore a loose robe that hung open across his chest, revealing almost absurdly large, corded muscles and skin tanned gold. Behind him, three more men and a woman filed out, each as deterministically perfect and beautiful as the last, like clones from the same donor.
“Ah, umm…” The Sung who’d been speaking dithered for a moment, clearly not expecting the interruption. Even in the confusion and consternation, the other brother kept his silence. “Yes, your holiness. This is Randall Munroe, a representative of the Corporate Council…”
Your holiness?
The perfect man descended the stairs, hands folded inside the sleeves of his robe, the smile on his face beatific.
“Good evening, Mr. Munroe,” he said, that hypnotic quality making my brain want to quit working right. “I am Israfil, High Priest of the Temple of the Ancients on the world known to humans as Aphrodite. I bring you the blessings and greetings of our creators.”
Son of a bitch. They were here already. He was with the Predecessor Cult.
***
“Tell me, Mr. Munroe,” Israfil said, sipping at the fruity drink the servant had brought for him, “where are you from, originally?”
I watched him carefully across the hand-carved wooden table, my eyes flitting back and forth between the Sung Brothers on either side of him like some mirror-image optical illusion. The upstairs dining room was huge and ornate, and the table was a good five meters long, yet here we were all crammed together at one end of it like a band of conspirators.
Oh, I’d had more uncomfortable dinners, usually involving Mom and Gramps, and I’d certainly had worse ones. The bison fillet had been mouth-wateringly good, particularly given that I hadn’t eaten anything besides shipboard fare in weeks, and the vegetables had been fresh. But time was ticking away, and I was nagged with the unmistakable feeling that I was wasting it.
“Trans-Angeles,” I responded after a moment. “Earth. Though I haven’t been back there in years.”
“So rare to find someone out here from Earth.” He toasted me with his goblet, which was real glass, crystal at that. “It seems as though most people on Earth are content to stay right where they are, apart from the very rich and the desperately poor.”
“You have to be pretty desperate to trade guaranteed housing, food, clothing and entertainment for military service,” I commented, not offering any personal details but saying what I thought he wanted to hear. “Especially in the middle of an interstellar war.”
“And yet I did just that,” the High Priest told me, almost as if he thought I’d been discussing his life instead of my own. “I left the safety and familiarity of the only life anyone in my family had ever known to join the Space Fleet, to get away from the squalid, miserable existence of life in the London Council Housing. And thanks be to the Ancients that I did, or I would never have come to hear their call, the call to return to their ways, to the path of life and perfection.”
He leaned across the table towards me, his eyes nearly glittering in the soft light, his voice mesmerizing. “Tell me, Mr. Munroe, have you ever felt their presence? Perhaps when you passed through the jumpgates they left for us, or walked on the worlds they prepared for us?” He gestured around grandly. “Even this world, though it is no paradise, has been changed to allow us to live here. Is it not the most humbling of gifts?”
“It is.” And I meant it, though I didn’t know why I was sharing it with this nutburger. There was something about him that made you want to talk to him. “I know someone who feels much as you do about the Predecessors.” I was married to her, in point of fact, but he didn’t need to know that. “But she doesn’t think they would have wanted us to worship them. She thinks they left us all this to make our own way, to be the best humans---or Tahni
---we could be, not to try to become like the Predecessors.”
“The Tahni are imperfect,” he scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. “They go into heat like animals, unable to control themselves. They were a clumsy, early attempt before the creators achieved their full magnitude of greatness. They were rushed to sentience. With us, the Ancients took their time and achieved their purpose.”
I sniffed, the hypnotic spell of his voice suddenly broken. That wasn’t a smooth, convincing argument; it was a well-rehearsed sermon.
“Humans don’t seem so perfect to me,” I commented.
“Not morally, I grant you that. But we are only given the opportunity to achieve perfection, not the guarantee. Too many of us obsess over possession, or technology, or power.” I glanced surreptitiously at the Sungs and saw them wince slightly, in chorus as always. Israfil clenched a fist in front of him. “The real power in this universe is to carry on the legacy we were left by the Ancients, to cherish our heritage and safeguard it from corruption.”
“Is that why you stole all those weapons from the Sung Brothers?” I asked him, hiding my grin behind my crystal goblet as I took a sip of fruity wine. “To safeguard our heritage?”
The Sung Brothers glanced at each other, then at Israfil, then at me.
“What the hell are you talking about?” It was the same brother, I was sure of it, the one who’d been doing all the talking before.
“I tried to tell you that the bratva weren’t the ones raiding your off-world weapons storage sites,” I reminded them. “The raiders are working for the Predecessor Cult.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” The speaking half of the Sungs demanded, though both shared the same disbelief and outrage in their expressions.
“If I had to guess,” I responded with a shrug, “it’s because they’re pissed off at you for letting the Skingangers steal their alien corpse and they don’t think your hired guns can get it back. So, they’re going to take your weapons and do it themselves.”
I took another drink, reveling in their discomfort. “And maybe,” I added, “they also intend to force you to tell them where you’re keeping Captain Marquette so they can find this treasure trove of Predecessor artifacts without worrying about the Corporate Council or Space Fleet Intelligence outbidding them.”
Israfil seemed unmoved by the exchange, his face as calm and confident as it had been the entire time.
“Does that sound about right, your holiness?” I asked him, cocking my head to the side questioningly.
“I assume you have some evidence that anything you’re saying is true,” Israfil said, motioning expansively, “and not just the claims of a representative of one of those who would wish to take the inheritance of the Ancients to use as a weapon for themselves or their employer?”
“Boss,” I heard Bobbi’s voice on the mastoid implant hooked to my ‘link. They hadn’t bothered to take the ‘link away…again, sloppy and unprofessional.
“Yes,” I said to her, but made it seem like I was answering Israfil.
“I found him.”
“I have it,” I told her, but looked at the High Priest. “I took it off the computer systems of the raider ship I destroyed on the habitable moon of the inner gas giant in this system just a couple days ago. I’d be happy to provide it to you,” I addressed that to the Sung Brothers.
Then I smiled in a way that I’d learned from Divya over the last year. “I have to wonder, though, if you’ve shared with Israfil here the information that you’re actually holding Captain Marquette prisoner here on the grounds, trying to sweat the location of the Predecessor cache world out of him so you can be the ones to auction all that technology off to the highest bidder.”
That got a reaction from the Cult priest. His eyes narrowed and he looked between the two brothers, his hands flat on the table like he was getting ready to leap up and attack.
“You have the man here?” He demanded. “You told us you were waiting for him to contact you.”
The Sungs stood, both pointing at me.
“He’s trying to turn us against each other,” the talkative one accused, scowling darkly. “It’s nothing but Corporate Council mind-games. They want the technology for themselves, you just said it.”
“Mr. Sung.”
Everyone turned, even me, at the sound of Caesar’s voice. He’d appeared soundlessly in the door to the dining room, and for a gut-twisting moment, I thought he was about to announce that they’d discovered Bobbi and the others. But he didn’t seem alarmed or upset, just perhaps a bit annoyed.
“What?” Sung snapped for both of them.
“Sirs, Captain Calderon and that DSI agent are here. They say they need to talk to you right away.”
Uh-oh. That could complicate matters.
“By all means,” Sung said, still glaring at me. “Why don’t all of us go down and see what they have to say.”
I spoke to Sung, but I meant the words for Bobbi.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
Chapter Eleven
“What in the hell is he doing here?”
I sighed heavily. Apparently, someone had thrown Calderon in the auto-doc and it had repaired his jaw, because he was back to his rugged good looks without the swelling and bruising. He was armored up, but without a helmet, like me. Unlike me, they’d allowed him to keep his sidearm and I saw him reaching for it until Van Stry put a restraining hand on his arm.
“Alberto,” she adjured him quietly. She was dressed in a heavy jacket and I couldn’t tell if she was armed, but she wasn’t looking angry for some reason.
Calderon moved his hand away from his holster and Caesar did as well…he was still standing in the open door, watching the interplay. When he saw Calderon calm down, he pushed the door shut and stepped into the sitting room behind the contractor officer.
“He’s stirring up trouble, mostly,” Sung said, eyeing me balefully as he and his brother came down off the last step of the staircase. “I wasn’t aware you two had met.”
“I tried talking to him before I came to you,” I said, attempting to keep the comment from turning into a snarl. “I thought maybe the way his people were killing innocent civilians was unintentional and we could sort through it in a professional manner. He threw me and my associates in a cell, then drugged us and tried to interrogate us.” I bared my teeth. “It didn’t go so well for him.”
“This piece of shit is in league with the bratva,” Calderon accused, taking a step toward me, shoulders squaring up. Van Stry stepped partially in his way and he scowled at her, but didn’t advance any farther. “They broke him out of our base and killed three of my people doing it! He’s why we’re here, we needed to warn you about him.”
“I listened to what Anatoly had to say,” I spoke to the Sungs, pointedly ignoring Calderon “because he had intelligence I needed. I’m not in league with anyone. I work for Andre Damiani, and his orders were to get the job done, whatever the cost.”
God, I felt dirty saying that. But it was something they’d respect; they sure as hell wouldn’t care about kids living in bombed-out houses.
“You need to lock this man up,” Van Stry urged the Sungs. “He’s dangerous, and I can guarantee that you’ll have an ample reward from my…” She hesitated. “…my connections if you turn him over to me.”
“We are not getting involved in internecine corporate politics,” Sung insisted, as both of them took up a stubborn stance. “This is between you and your bosses and you can fight it out on your own turf.” His frown deepened. “And you can all get the hell out of here now, as far as I’m concerned. We have business with our clients to attend to.”
He’d nodded towards Israfil, who still seemed distrustful of the two men. He hadn’t said a word since we’d come down the stairs, but I thought I’d seen his lips moving, noticed his eyes flickering side to side, the way someone did when they were using an implant mastoid transmitter.
“The Cult?” Van Stry said, staring at the priest and apparently re
cognizing his vestments. “What sort of business do you have with the Predecessor Cult?”
“They prefer the title ‘Church of the Ancients,’ Agent Van Stry,” Sung ground out. “And as difficult as this might be for you to understand, our business is none of yours. Calderon, go do your fucking job and get back what those fucking Skingangers stole from us. I don’t want to see your face again until you do.”
“I need some backup if you want me to go into the Skinganger neighborhood,” Calderon insisted plaintively. “I need armored vehicles.”
“They’ll give it back to you,” I said. The Sungs both looked around at that, as did Israfil. “Anatoly told me he’d give you back the Predecessor corpse. You can give it to the priest, do whatever with it. On two conditions.”
“Tell me,” Sung prompted, licking his lips with what seemed like an unconscious tick.
“He and Alexi want to make a deal to share the market.” I shrugged. “They can’t take it back from you, but they can make it unprofitable. They’d rather negotiate something that’ll profit you both.”
“What else?”
“The Predecessor tech. They don’t care if you sell it to the government or to the Corporate Council, but you can’t sell it to them.” I nodded towards Israfil. “Be honest, do you think the Cult could offer you as much as Fleet Intelligence? Or Andre Damiani?” I shot a look at Van Stry, who seemed nonplused by the whole discussion. “Or even my mom, Patrice?”
“Your mom?” Sung repeated, brows knitting in confusion.
“You can end this war,” I offered them. “You can get back to business as usual, get all of us out of your hair and turn a hell of a profit on Marquette’s find. Do you want to make a deal?”