Heart of a Traitor

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  “My name is Officer Lenhard,” he explained. A few paces behind him stood Jaeg in a ruffled police uniform, leaning up against a gray police skimmer, a wild smirk on his face.

  In a second Nariko put it together. After their ‘encounter,’ Jaeg, an off-duty officer, had gone back to the station, hastily changed his clothes, grabbed the nearest officer he could find, and set off looking for her. If she had been paying more attention, she would have noticed the skimmer approaching and avoided it.

  What is wrong with me? She wondered as she chastised her lack of focus.

  “Please pardon the inconvenience, my heiress, but I will need to see your ident-card,” Lenhard mandated.

  Nariko nodded and reached down for her purse. Putting her weight on one leg, she launched herself off to one side. Officer Lenhard reached out to stop her, his hand knocking off her sunglasses and catching the nape of her neck. Nariko threw all of her strength into it and broke free of him, her necklace and purse strap breaking free in his grasp.

  Within a heartbeat, Lenhard had drawn his stun-pistol, but Nariko had already ducked into the alley.

  Lenhard took off after her running while Jaeg jumped into the skimmer, activating its jets with a whining purr and followed the street around, hoping to cut her off.

  Slipping through the crowds, Nariko was able to put some distance between her and her pursuers, but they still had her in clear sight after two blocks of zigzagging.

  This is so frustrating. If I kill them or capture them, the local law enforcement will go berserk and there will be too many patrols for us to finish our mission. If I try to knock them out, I run the risk of them getting a good look at my face and then every auger in the city will be profiling for me.

  We both know that’s not the real reason. If you fight them you will lose control again.

  Nariko turned a corner, the man barking orders at her from a distance. She saw a group of schurkes loitering about in front of a bar and ran up to them.

  Remember Keiko’s first lesson: Female tears are worth a million bullets.

  “You guys have got to help me,” Nariko gasped, intentionally making her eyes dewy and adding a frightened squeak to her voice.

  “A few blocks back this weirdo in a suit tried to hit on me and I TOLD him he totally wasn’t my type, but he wouldn’t leave me alone. Now he’s, like, following me and I think he has a knife.” Nariko made her lip tremble and wiped the forming tears from her face.

  “I was so scared I had to start running,” Nariko sobbed, “and I split my favorite skirt up the side, SEE?”

  To emphasize the point, Nariko grabbed the sides of the tear and shook them, revealing her well-toned thigh, knowing full well what their reaction would be.

  The men came to immediate attention and one even swore an oath that he would protect her. At her beckoning, they formed up so that Nariko could conceal herself behind them.

  Nariko hid herself near the schurk who was obviously the leader and grabbed the back of his muscular bicep and squeezed it with her delicate hand. She could feel the man embolden as he imagined what his ‘reward’ might be for helping her.

  Keiko’s lessons are really starting to pay off.

  The officer came around the corner and looked down the street, breathing heavily. Unable to see his quarry in either direction, he ran up to the group of schurkes in front of the bar.

  “A fräulein ran by here in a red dress,” he explained. “Which way did she go?”

  The young men shifted their weight expectantly.

  “Yeah, we’ve seen her,” the head schurke snarled.

  Suddenly four of the men tackled Lenhard and began beating him viciously, shouting out insults. From somewhere one of the young men produced a length of metal chain and began whipping him with it. Lenhard whimpered pitifully as he struggled to defend himself.

  Maybe I overdid it a little, Nariko thought to herself as she slipped away. I hope they don’t kill him. He is just doing his job, after all.

  After a few more blows, Lenhard lost consciousness. The young nobles held up his bruised and battered body to show off their prize to the beautiful women they had aided, only to realize that she was nowhere to be seen.

  After a few more blocks of zigzagging, Nariko paused to assess her situation. The twin suns had completely set and the crowds were rapidly dispersing. Elegantly dressed serfs were beginning to light the natural gas torches that illuminated the streets at night, giving the city buildings a gentle glow that the couples out courting appreciated very much. Without the cover of crowds, it would be pretty hard to rendezvous with the rest of Shiro squad without being spotted. She estimated that there were about eighty blocks between her and the shuttlebay they had rented out. Nariko reached up to activate the vox-comm in her earring, before remembering that she had taken it off and put it in her purse, which was probably right now sitting in a plastic bag labeled “exhibit A,” and being taken for analysis and comparison to the DNA database.

  Nariko smiled to herself. If they manage to match up my DNA with the family lines of a planet that has had been dead for three hundred years, then they deserve to catch me. The data compilation alone would probably kill a cyber-savant before they make the match.

  Nariko walked over to a major thoroughfare and hailed a hover taxi that was passing by. The cab came to a swift stop as its forward maneuvering jets fired. Nariko got inside and gave the driver directions to a park near the shuttlebay where the rest of Shiro squad would be waiting for her, concerned for her safety, no doubt.

  The cab fired its rear jets and glided along smoothly on its anti-gravity plates. Taking in her surroundings, Nariko noticed a small dome mounted in the corner.

  A retinal scanner!

  Nariko quickly reacted, just barely closing her eyes before the flash of the scanning pulses went off.

  That was too close. She had not entered Ardura through any legitimate checkpoints, so her retinal print was not on file. An unidentified print would set off an alarm at the police network and they’d have converged on her within minutes.

  If she had the proper tools, Nariko could break into the camera housing and hard-wire the buffer into a loop to keep any scans from getting stored in the memory cache. But, she didn’t have any of her tools with her and the driver would most certainly object to her doing something like that to the inside of his taxi. Nariko reached underneath her seat and searched around. Finding her quarry, she pulled out an old piece of caffeine gum that someone had stuck there and squashed it over the lens before opening her eyes again.

  Sometimes low-tech solutions are the best solutions, Nariko thought before offering up a quick prayer of apology to the spirit of the scanner.

  With her purse missing, Nariko knew that she would have to stiff the driver, but she was on a mission and so it was...

  Nariko paused in her thought. She couldn’t justify herself like that anymore. It was a trap. She would not excuse herself with duty, even for small things. Nariko memorized the cab number and made a mental note to mail off the fare to him once she got back to the shuttlebay. It was not a perfect solution, but it was better than nothing.

  You finally learned that lesson. It is, however, too little too late, for you.

  Suddenly the cab’s forward jets fired and it came to a stop.

  Fusho, did they get a scan of me after all? Nariko worried as she braced her arms against the door for leverage, in case she needed to deliver a powerful kick to the neck of the person that got in the cab with her.

  The backseat door opened and a man stepped in and sat down.

  “Hey,” the man said, surprised. “You’re Betti, from Correll, right?”

  Nariko furrowed her brow. This man seemed to know her from somewhere.

  “Brannon?” she guessed.

  “I’m flattered,” he responded with a smile, bowing slightly.

  Nariko relaxed her muscles and allowed the tension to flow out of her.

  “So, did you get some shopping done today?” he a
sked warmly.

  “Um, I got some fudge,” Nariko responded, looking out the opposite window and considering walking the rest of the way.

  Brannon leaned forward, looking at something.

  “Is there caf-gum on the scanner?” he asked quietly.

  “Um, yeah. So, what about you...shopping,” she stammered, trying to change the subject.

  “I tracked down some incense from the Querian Emmerates, very good stuff,” Brannon said, as he pulled out a handkerchief and reached up to pull the gum off.

  “Oh, please don’t touch it...that’s gross,” Nariko said, slipping back into her role of a courtesan, “some dirty schurke could have left it there.”

  Brannon smiled and put his handkerchief away.

  “You’re right, of course. Although I wouldn’t judge them too harshly, they’ll grow out of it eventually and when they do they’ll look back and realize how stupid they looked.”

  Nariko nodded, but she wasn’t listening. Her focus was on the illuminated lights of a police skimmer approaching them from behind. She relaxed when it passed them and sped off down the street.

  “I did a little bit of that when I was a teen,” Brannon confessed.

  Nariko turned toward him and made a face that said ‘eeeew,’ and ‘I’m intrigued’ at the same time. A trick she picked up from Keiko.

  “Really,” he continued. “I had the filthy cavalier shirt with the billowy sleeves, the jerkin vest, the sash, a pair of knee breeches, everything just like they wear on Fitchan. I even scraped them all up with rocks so they would look old and used, like I lived in the gutter.”

  Brannon chuckled to himself and Nariko laughed right along with him, mostly because she was imagining how stupid he must have looked like dressed up like that.

  “So, why would you want to dress like a commoner?” Nariko asked, forgetting about her cover for a moment and asking a sincere question.

  Brannon thought about it.

  “Lots of reasons. I guess I just wanted to pretend that I was someone else. I wanted to pretend that I wasn’t my father’s son.”

  Brannon caught himself being serious and laughed it off. “I got a little too personal there, didn’t I?” He apologized.

  Nariko waved her hand, indicating that it was fine. She had already decided that this man was harmless.

  Much to Nariko’s relief, the cab came to a stop. She moved to open the door, but realized that something was holding her hand. She looked back fearfully and realized that Brannon was holding her hand to kiss it again.

  “I know this is terribly forward of me, but I was wondering if I could call on you sometime, Miss Geheimnis,” he said sincerely.

  Nariko sighed heavily. She was getting so tired of being solicited like this. She thought about kicking him, but for some reason she just didn’t have it in her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she pulled her hand away and exited the cab.

  Brannon sat back and sighed to himself, as if he were not accustomed to being brushed off.

  “You can take me to my stop now,” Brannon requested. Instead, the driver turned around, scowling.

  “I’m not going anywhere until someone pays for her fare.”

  Back at the shuttlebay, Don Kielter sat on a rations crate like it was a throne. He leaned forward and spoke solemnly, forcing his attentive audience to lean in as well. Taka and Ami knelt at his feet like loyal followers. Keiko and Sakurako listened at a distance while they slaved over their data panels. Michi half listened while she attempted to prepare some food, while Sorano happily worked on the Kanochan’s engine, oblivious to all else.

  “The female heart is very tender,” he said, speaking as if he were the lord of all creation. “So, women subconsciously protect themselves with a series of barriers. I like to think of them as locked doors. To get close to a woman’s heart, you have to get through these doors one by one. A few men, like myself, have a natural ability to sense what the keys are, which makes breaking through a woman’s defenses much easier. A key can be just about anything, a phrase, a gesture, a look, a gift. Usually it has to do with an insecurity or a deep-seeded need. It’s all very specific to the woman, but one thing is the same. When you use the key, for better or worse, you get closer to her heart.”

  “Is that some sort of psychic ability?” Michi inquired.

  Don Kielter sat up straight, thinking, as if the thought had never occurred to him before.

  “I don’t think so,” he decided.

  “That’s just a bunch of cheenkay,” Sorano accused, proving that she was listening after all.

  As if on cue, Don Kielter pulled out a digital pass-card from his pocket.

  “I don’t see chinkey going to the Dirne club ‘Zehn Nächte’ tomorrow evening, do you?”

  Keiko clapped her hands together in elation.

  “Thank you very much for that,” she said, walking over and snatching the card out of his hands, “And it’s pronounced cheen-kay, not chin-key. Don’t try to say it unless you can do it right.”

  Don Kielter ignored her and basked in the praise heaped on him by his adoring fans.

  “So, tell us how you did it,” Taka asked, fascinated.

  “She was only a triple, so it was pretty easy,” Kielter elucidated. “Her first door was isolation. She is an only child and has some rather eclectic hobbies, so she has trouble relating to others. I kicked down that door when she discovered that we have two of the same hobbies in common.”

  “What hobbies?” Taka interrupted.

  “That’s none of your business,” he responded, without missing a beat. Anyway...”

  “Ah, those kind of hobbies,” Taka affirmed.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “her second door was security. She has had far too many suitors mooch off of her. That door was opened when I offered to buy her some exotic perfume she had been pining for.”

  “Where’d you get the money for that?” Taka interrupted again.

  “Nariko’s purse. Anyway, her final door was boredom. My guess is that she considers herself a dull person, or perhaps her last boyfriend severely lacked any kind of spontaneity. When I proposed doing something wonderfully irreverent and improper like going out to a Dirne club together without even so much as a first night of courtship, she jumped on the idea.”

  “That was so kawaii,” Ami praised, gushing.

  “Donni-bear, you gotta teach me that trick,” Taka exclaimed, throwing her hands up over her head, her wings fluttering in anticipation.

  “It’s not really something that can be taught,” Don Kielter said, feigning modesty.

  “Do it again, I wanna see,” shouted Ami, hopping up and down.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Keiko advised, her hair shimmering ocean blue with focus as she carefully cut away the outer layer of the pass-card, revealing the crystal veins and magnetic strips underneath.

  “I think it’s been long enough that we need to start looking for Nariko,” Michi counseled as she scraped the burned area off of a piece of food that was beginning to look like charcoal.

  Don Kielter dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand.

  “She’s fine. She just needs to blow off some steam. I already told you I saw her by Kiesel Park.”

  “Ooh, I got an idea! You could try out your trick on one of us, so we can see how it’s done,” Taka suggested.

  Ami giggled with delight.

  “Try it out on Ami,” Taka buzzed. “She’s the girliest one here.”

  “Thanks,” Ami said proudly.

  Don Kielter straightened his clothes and cracked his fingers. “I hope you guys realize that the difficulty level like triples when she knows it is coming, like Ami does. Plus, you guys are soldiers, you’re not technically human, you’re really old and there is a cultural gap to consider...”

  “Quit making excuses and show us your magic, already,” Sorano chided.

  Don Kielter leaned in close to Ami, looking directly into her large pink eyes. After several moments of s
ilence, Ami began to look visibly uncomfortable and leaned back away from him.

  “Ami,” Don Kielter said, sounding very serious and sincere. “I’m going to say something to you, but I want you to understand before I do that I am being completely honest, so don’t think I’m saying this just to say it, okay?”

  “O-okay.”

  “You are probably the most mature person I’ve met in the Seventh Division.”

  Ami’s eyes narrowed sarcastically.

  “No, really. You always put everyone else’s needs before your own, you always think about other people first. Don’t you realize how selfless that it? There is so much about you that is admirable; I just wish you would allow yourself to see it like I see it.”

  There was a deep honesty in his face.

  Ami turned her gaze down and blushed a bright, cherry red.

  “Thanks,” Ami squeaked.

  Everyone watched in stunned silence for a moment as they watched Ami blush brightly.

  “Looks like it worked, Don,” Taka said, impressed.

  “Well done, Don,” Sorano said, clapping loudly.

  Embarrassed, Ami pushed Sorano aside.

  “You guys shouldn’t laugh just because he said something nice about me,” Ami defended.

  “Don’t feel bad, Ami,” Don Kielter said, patting her gently on the head. “I may have just done it for show just now, but what I said was true. It has to be true, or it won’t work.”

  “Well, maybe tomorrow you can make it up to me by taking me out for ice cream,” Ami suggested, rocking back and forth innocently.

  Don Kielter smiled. “Wow, you are just a prison sentence waiting to happen, kid.”

  Ami stomped her foot. “I’m three hundred and twenty! Stop treating me like a little kid!”

  “So, what’s the male heart like?” asked Sakurako, fascinated.

  Everyone paused and looked in her direction, as if to verify that it really was her who had asked. They were unaccustomed to hearing her speak at all, let alone take interest in light conversation.

  “The male heart is more like a light-switch...” he began.

  At that moment, Nariko burst into the room, her dress torn, her hair in tangles and missing her purse and necklace.