Moro's Price

by M. Crane Hana

  “Er,” said Hegen.

  A shiny black float-cycle arced down through the hole, corrected trajectory to avoid the wall, spun around twice, jolted as its ground sensors kicked in, and stopped neatly beside the gurney.

  “Close the dome!” the ambassador yelled, lunging forward.

  Hegen stared at the two figures on the cycle. The driver was a short youth with startling white-gold curly hair and brown skin. A second figure, masked and gloved in bright orange, slumped close behind him. Swearing, crying, wild-eyed, the driver hacked a knife at the tangle of cloth tying him and the passenger together. The ambassador reached the driver and slapped him across the face. “Valier, what have you done?”

  “Ask Cama! Help me cut him loose!” the driver shouted. “I had to tie him on. He’s going into shock, I can feel it. Something’s wrong!”

  When the Camalian medics swarmed in, Hegen surprised himself by joining them. They had the passenger down on the gurney and cut away the cotton jacket and trousers. Someone removed the orange mask to place a breathing tube.

  Hegen stared down at a haggard, blue-lipped, but still familiar face. “Moro?” he asked, automatically reaching to take the pulse at Moro’s throat. Weak and unsteady. Worse than after the Vance attack that had nearly killed him. “Damn you, boy, what’s been done to you now?” Hegen growled, shucking his own jacket and rolling up his shirtsleeves.

  “Wait,” said Alys, grabbing Hegen’s collar. “You know this man, Dr. Hegen?”

  “I’ve only been trying to keep him alive and physically healthy for the last four years,” Hegen said. “In spite of two insane masters and whole planets of sadists.”

  “Oh really,” said the youth, stepping closer as the Camalian medics got busy. “Did you work for Kott?”

  “No. Yes. Sort of,” Hegen began, trying to free himself from the ambassador’s grip and get back to Moro. The next second he sprawled on the white tile floor, dizzily blinking away the impact of a hard fist on his mouth. He tasted blood.

  “You call yourself a doctor?” snarled the youth. He nearly blazed in fury, a dark-golden godling on the edge of berserker rage. “Get out of my sight, you bastard. You can tell Kott and Sardis they’ll have to go through me to touch him now!”

  “Kott’s dead,” Hegen muttered. “Think Sardis killed him. I’ve been trying to get Moro away from them for years. Saw him born, I did.”

  Thirty-Three

  CAMA WAS IN no mood to be polite. When Alys heard the doctor say, “Saw him born,” the elemental snapped all her attention to the human medic.

  “Good,” Alys heard herself purr, her hands reaching to pull the battered man upright. “We’ll get stimulants in you and a shield-suit to protect you from my infection. You’ll command the medical team. Whatever you have to do, Moro has to stay alive. We’ll pay you whatever you ask.”

  “Alys!” Valier yelled. “Don’t let him touch Moro!”

  Alys felt Cama look at Valier, then at the unknown Moro. Every Camalian in the room felt the elemental’s smug, nervous pride as one of the medics pulled away the dying man’s cap.

  Amber silk scraps knotted his long blue-black hair into the betrothal crest of the Antonins of Camonde.

  Cama, more concerned with Moro’s insides, abandoned Alys for the most experienced medic. Two other personnel were ruthlessly stripping poor Hegen on the spot, injecting stimulants directly into his arteries, wiping his cut mouth, and stuffing him into a shield-suit.

  “Valier, what have you done?” Alys growled again, free of Cama’s control.

  He stood his ground between her and the gurney: desperate, protective, and not in the least ashamed of the horrible mess he’d dropped on everyone tonight. “Mom and Cama never found any of my male Potential mates, so they thought there were only females. There was one man. He just wasn’t Camalian yet.”

  Alys, who had experienced firsthand the intensity of a Camalian Royal finding and fixating upon a perfectly matched mate, stared at Valier. He certainly had Lia’s wild and obstinate look.

  “I’ve found my Knife.” Then Valier crumpled against her, sobbing, his fists clenching in her uniform jacket. “And I’ve killed him. It’s all going wrong! Cama doesn’t know why.”

  At Valier’s outburst, the medics appeared distracted and shaky. The human doctor seemed to notice nothing, all his skill focused upon Moro. Valier was an Antonin Royal newly linked to a dying Knife. From his earliest days, Valier had a warped, unconscious influence on Cama. Only a few people knew he’d already led their Patrona into bad decisions.

  Alys motioned to a Camalian medic, not willing to say her next order out loud. There’d been another reason why Lia sent her to Cedar with Valier, trusting Alys with the hardest choice a soldier and mother could ever make.

  Valier looked up as she gently laid the new hypo against his throat. He smiled and tilted his head more. “I know,” he said. “My flaws.”

  “You need to sleep, that’s all,” soothed Alys. “Your fear unsettles Cama, and that’s hurting the rest of us.”

  “Yes. But if he dies?” Valier began.

  “Then you won’t wake up,” she said, not wanting to lie.

  Alys held him as he went limp, her son of a different mother. She laid him on a pile of crates and turned to look at the still, pale figure on the gurney. Then she really looked, seeing something obvious, terrifying, and impossible. She was the only Camalian alive who knew what she saw.

  She pushed closer to the unconscious man. “Keep working. I need to check something,” she said to Hegen.

  The patient’s bare feet and bare fingers bore neatly trimmed nails, not Sonta claws. She opened his jaw without unseating the breathing tube, pulled back his upper and lower lips, noting the healthy white teeth. Both sets of canines were a fraction longer than human normal, but not out of human range. Alys opened his eyelids, pausing over the large black irises merging with his pupils. She turned his head gently one way, then the other.

  Valier’s hastily tied crest pulled back the man’s hair, to reveal the slight ridge of scarred cartilage across the top of each ear.

  “He’s dying because we’re trying to treat a Camalian human,” she said. “But he’s not. He’s part Sonta.”

  “What?” asked one of the Camalian medics.

  “Hmmph,” said Hegen through his suit microphone, elbowing someone too slow out of the way and adjusting the medications himself. “I knew his mother, Anya, was Sonta, and he’s her very image. He even got her black blood.”

  “Blood?” Alys stepped back. She half recalled something Jumay had said once, about certain castes of Sonta.

  “We never could keep a sample of hers for longer than a few minutes. It had a tendency to turn black and vanish when no one was looking,” Hegen said. “Turn him over. We need to do internal repairs first.”

  Thirty-Four

  THE THREE WORLDSHIPS and their Ksala pulled away from two full hours spent above the large moon RS14, once called Ventana.

  Human observers, primed with images from Manchester, waited to witness the resurrection of the wrecked moon. Most Rio Sardis personnel had already been evacuated behind the yellow-green gas giant. The one surviving town lay empty, the thin air barely stirring dust in its vacant streets.

  But the star-eater had extended only one delicate tentacle to brush over a vast, deep pit a hundred miles east of the town. No trace remained of grassy hills crowned with ruins.

  Without further action or communication, the huge black creature turned and sped through the portal held open by its escorts.

  Deep within the flagship, on a bed wreathed in smoky gauze, Savinilan Aksenna Sonta held his Ksala while she wept mortal tears and damaged her mortal hands savaging a pillow.

  “Why didn’t she call me? Why didn’t he? I would have come to them! How could I not feel their deaths, so long ago? How could I not feel their child’s misery? What is wrong with me?” she wailed. “Why can’t I think?”

  “You feel rage and sorrow and guilt, Ksal
a Aksenna.”

  “What heals it?”

  “Time and distance dulls it. Love distracts it. Some say blood avenges it.”

  “Do you love me, Savi?” she whispered. “Is that why you stay by me, all of you, even though I hurt you? To distract me?”

  The cinnamon-skinned Sonta man, born to a gentler tribe, kissed her wet cheeks and laid her back among the shredded sheets. “Yes, Ksala Aksenna. We love you. Even at your worst.”

  His skilled mouth left her lips and cheeks; his tongue lavished wet caresses on her neck, breasts, and belly. His fingers dipped lower, finding the slick warmth between her legs.

  He slipped one thigh under hers, opening her again, and took her with silent strength.

  Aksenna’s hands gentled when they stroked his sweating, straining shoulders. She trembled when he lifted her from her pain.

  “Time and distance are only clocks,” she said when she was dry-eyed again. “Ticking down to the cold death of this universe. Love is just a shared delusion. Aiyon taught me that eons ago, while we were still free.”

  Savinilan smiled into her shoulder. “If you say so, Ksala Aksenna.”

  “If Anya and Merrick’s child is dead, it is by my negligence.”

  “The boy faced nothing he wouldn’t face to earn his place among us.”

  “He’s half-human,” said Aksenna. “We made allowances for his father. And what we do to each other, we do always by mutual choice. The Terrani gave the boy none.”

  “Also true,” said Savinilan.

  “If Anya’s son is dead, then there must be blood to answer it, Savi. My blood, and his tormentors’. Bypass Kashmir. Bring me to Cedar. All of me.”

  Thirty-Five

  AT TWO MINUTES to seven, morning sun slanted across the green grass and towering trees of the diplomatic district. A hundred feet below the ground, in a warren of service tunnels, three silent men hauled a floating sled laden with a four-foot-wide metal sphere. The ancient, corroded sphere was studded with metal prongs in a regular pattern. The men consulted paths and turnings from an antique map loaded onto a portable screen.

  They were careful with the sled.

  AT PRECISELY SEVEN in the morning, Bill leaned back from a decent breakfast in a nice little café off the university’s main campus. He was pleased to see Zarin Basrali did not pick decoratively at some chronic dieter’s fruit and yogurt dish. She attacked sugar-spiced toast and two chicken tamales with forthright dispatch. Her combination of appetite and efficiency appealed to him.

  “Did Transportation get its present?” he asked when she’d swallowed her last bite.

  “I believe so, Sero Sardis.”

  “I told you, I’m Bill. Don’t go to work today,” he said. “It’s Sunday.”

  “So?” she asked after swallowing a prodigious gulp of cooling coffee. “I need to be there. The weekend morning staff is mostly Terra Prima interns, hired on as favors to their rich parents. I can think rings around them. If something comes up, I’ll derail it.”

  “Unless it’s my father.”

  “Then let’s just say it’s been nice talking to you, Bill Sardis. You’ve reaffirmed my faith in our company.”

  “I shouldn’t,” said Bill. “I am a duplicitous and deviant bastard. To my mother’s great dismay, I sometimes chase men.”

  She laughed. “And I sometimes chase women.” At his slightly crushed expression, she added, “But more often, men. Some men. Interesting ones.”

  “Ah,” said Bill, his grin brightening.

  “Do you steal patents, worlds, and people?” she asked, her dark blue eyes level and serious.

  “Why? For stupid ego trips? I pay well and safeguard my investments. The sellers know they can do future business with me. Everybody wins or at least breaks even.”

  “And thus you are not Lyton Sardis. Nor Terise Volker,” said Basrali. “I think I know a company desperately needing your guidance.”

  “I don’t think I could handle it alone.”

  “It is made up of many talented and valuable people,” she said. Basrali’s upper lip skimmed over the sturdy ceramic cup, catching a wisp of coffee foam before she licked it away. “I’m sure you can find some trustworthy delegates.”

  And there it was, as he’d promised. Over coffee and breakfast, a potential alliance laid out on several levels. Not love. He was a little too jaded to believe in that. Honesty was a good start.

  “I need a delegate.” Bill handed her a slim platinum bracelet with a single sapphire stud near the hinge. “It’s keyed to my personal communicator. Do you know ancient Morse code?” At her slightly affronted nod, he said, “It’s no good for long-range. You can’t receive, but I can listen in and find you from the broadcast if I’m close enough.”

  “Do you believe I will need it?”

  Bill swallowed and then said, “Based on your looks, efficiency, and non-Terra Prima background, I think there is a strong possibility my father will ask you to accompany him and my mother on a journey in the next twenty-four hours. It will be dangerous. They will not ask me.”

  “Ah,” said Basrali. “You want a woman inside? Mission?”

  “Monitor. Record. Sabotage when possible. Without being caught or killed, of course. Sex is a possibility, but be aware Lyton Sardis may treat you as a substitute for someone unavailable and of a different gender.”

  “Vilam Volker Sardis,” said Basrali, raising an eyebrow. “Are you actually pimping me out to spy on your father?”

  “Yes. If he asks you to go, and if you’ll do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he won’t trust me. Rio Sardis itself is at stake, if I’m guessing right. My father’s mad quest may take down everything my family has built. I think you can help stop that.”

  “You’re taking a big chance on a woman you just met,” she asked. “Your dates can’t normally all end like this, surely?”

  “Sera Basrali,” said Bill. “I don’t date. I scratch itches or I consider long-term alliances. Are you involved with anyone at the moment?”

  “Romantically? Sexually?” she asked.

  “Either. Both.”

  “I believe I might be, in the future,” she said, snapping the bracelet closed on her left wrist.

  AT TWELVE MINUTES past seven in the morning, Mark David Moore answered the pounding on his luxurious apartment’s front door with a snarl and a pulse gun aimed straight at the hooligans disturbing the peace.

  Those turned out to be several policemen and earnest representatives of Cedar-Saba’s Transportation Bureau, with search warrants for his home, office, recording studio, and all relevant computers.

  DENNIS VANCE RESISTED the urge to check up on the three demolitions experts he and Moore had hired.

  Excitement made his stomach feel light and his old knees shake. It had been easier to just stay up all night than catch a few hours of sleep. Now he attempted his usual morning walk down to the West Stratton café where he habitually broke his fast.

  From there, he would quietly head to the spaceport south of Stratton. He’d already stocked a small ship with hard-credits and keepsakes he didn’t want to lose. Vance planned to be off Cedar well before noon.

  The exclusive neighborhood was guarded by circulating human security and robot drones. More of the ubiquitous cedars arched along the streets, their vast canopies shading low, sprawling, elegant houses. The next street over was Vance’s destination, the beginning of an equally exclusive district of respectable shops, offices, and eateries. It still rankled Vance how the district planners hadn’t let him put in one of his nightclubs. But he made more profit in the middle-class and poorer sectors and knew it.

  None of that mattered now.

  Before he reached the next intersection, Vance caught the soft hum of a transport engine.

  A huge floating limo had pulled up alongside him, its charcoal and platinum finish announcing Rio Sardis before Vance even saw the palm-tree logo on the foremost door.

  Ten feet past the first, anoth
er door opened on an empty seat.

  “Sero Dennis Vance?” said a man’s baritone voice from deeper within the limo.

  Vance’s skin crawled, as much from envy of the passenger’s temporal power as from knowing Lyton Sardis fucked men. “Sero Sardis?” Vance asked politely enough.

  “Might I offer you a lift to your café, Sero Vance?”

  It was not terribly safe to refuse, so Vance said, “I would be honored, Sero Sardis.”

  Just enough light spilled from the far window to show Vance the alert, calm profile of a man who looked every bit a corporate king. Perfect suit, perfect hair, perfectly toned body. Chronologically, Lyton Sardis was at least twice Vance’s age. He was better looking than young Karl in his cut-short prime.

  Sardis’s keen gray eyes looked through Vance’s politeness and hidden revulsion. “While we travel, I humbly beg your assistance, Sero Vance,” said Sardis without preamble, unrolling a small viewing scroll and nudging it across the six feet of petal-soft gray leather seat. “Do you know these men?”

  Vance picked it up.

  A forensics reconstruction of two nude human males appeared on the flattened screen, tracking in to focus on their faces.

  “I do,” said Vance. If Sardis was here, with this information, there was no point in lying. “They were bouncers at one of my clubs. The police said they were apparently murdered last night, down in Vaclav Sector.”

  “A long way south of your territory, Sero Vance. Why were your men in Vaclav?”

  Sardis smiled, laying one arm across the seat back.

  Vance shifted away. “I’d sent them on a business trip, Sero Sardis.”

  “What business?”

  “Business concerning the Camalian crown prince,” said Vance, gritting his teeth. “The little bastard and one of his uni friends caused an expensive fight at one of my clubs last year.”

  “Ah, yes, the Antonin boy. I’d heard he caught the eye of your grandson Karl, at a party,” Sardis murmured. “Words and unlikely threats were exchanged. Police were summoned. You bailed Karl out of the local drunk tank before you warned him in public against ‘fucking a disease-ridden demon.’ Karl stopped talking to you. He did not have your wise counsel a few months later when he threw his name into the championship lists for the Golden Cage.”