Moro's Price

by M. Crane Hana

  “Coffee?” offered one young man. “There’s tea and hot chocolate too. I’ve got cinnamon rolls coming up from the kitchen with the last of the cooks. If you dare eat with us?”

  “Dr. Hegen,” said Shannon, grinning. “Would you join me and my team for some hot chocolate?”

  Fifty-One

  TWO HOURS BEFORE, it had been a perfectly lovely Sunday morning. Good food, good coffee, a fun new plot against his parents, a beautiful woman to share it with.

  Now Bill gunned his float-cycle’s engines mercilessly, weaving between the aerial traffic hurtling the other way out of the blast zone. He’d already taken several different black-market supplements to help block the effects of mild radiation. The cycle carried a very special gun loaded with some very illegal ammunition. He had food, water, stimulants, a medical kit, and a change of clothes. He wore black fabric flying gear against the cool morning air. A helmet concealed his face, its side-screen displays giving him a constant information feed.

  Which wasn’t comforting. The only good thing? Any top Rio Sardis personnel still on Cedar were probably running as well. They’d be too busy to ask why and how Rowe Vermilion Singh had joined forces with Cedar Revenue against them. If Bill wasn’t careful and lucky, he’d lose his own toehold in Rio Sardis. Or even destroy the company.

  I’m not going to get blown up, he thought. I’ll be done here soon, and then I’ll run. If I can find Lyton’s damned ship before it leaves! Zarin, keep your head, you’re my only contact.

  Basrali’s Morse locator had pinged near the diplomatic district. For the brief time it had been active, Bill tracked its trajectory toward a Rio Sardis warehouse in north-central Saba. It would be well guarded on the inside, Bill knew. No point in forcing or duping his way in. Such gambits would only spook Lyton into less predictable reactions. So Bill settled the float-cycle into the massive lower branches of one of the giant cedar trees, some four hundred feet northeast of the building. And waited.

  Not quite six minutes later, Bill spotted the brown ambulance as it swerved neatly off the crowded aerial. It threaded the side street and slid into the building’s lower parking structure.

  Inside the ambulance, inside the building, any number of horrible things could be happening. Probably were happening. Bill hoped Lyton wouldn’t have enough time to do more than load the ship.

  Bill eased the cycle out of the tree.

  The warehouse’s three-hundred-foot-long roof began to slide open down the center.

  Bill waited just until he saw the ship’s blunt white nose begin to swing upward on its launch gantry. In atmosphere, away from the special launch pits at larger ports, the courier ship was limited in how fast it could take off. When Bill saw the telltale white water-vapor condensate misting from the back end of the roof, he gunned the cycle’s engines again.

  Just another panicked flyer, he shot over the lifting ship. The pilot saw him and blasted an atmosphere siren at him. The ship thundered underneath him with only a foot or two to spare. Bill raised his middle finger in a time-honored salute and let his cycle wobble as if he was stunned in the wake of turbulence behind the ship.

  By then the soft, dull impact of Bill’s ammunition had been lost in the engine’s roar and the loud horn blast. At the very back of Lyton’s ship, hidden from casual discovery below a vent housing, Bill’s primary locator beacon waited passively to initiate his time-delayed commands. Bill watched his father’s ship slant upward through morning sky and cloud, gaining speed and then vanishing.

  My turn, he thought. But as he spun the cycle south toward his own well-stocked chase ship, the morning sun dimmed in odd rippling bands of light and shadow. An eclipse? Cedar had two moons big enough for solar occultation, but nothing had been mentioned on the news. Then Bill looked up and killed the cycle’s forward momentum. It sank slowly toward the ground. If he’d been on the aerial itself, he’d have been splattered by traffic.

  Two Sonta worldships appeared, haloed by sunlight, still far above Cedar’s atmosphere. Their shadows fell in vast cones across the sky. They were pointed at the bow, rounded at the stern, their seed-shaped profiles jutting with massive embankments of guns and docks for a fleet of smaller fighters. The two ships crackled with another halo. Pale orange-pink light flickered around their outer edges and stretched between them. The third ship appeared, almost on Cedar-Saba’s northern horizon. The orange halo became a round-edged, curved triangle hundreds of miles across, parallel to the planet’s surface, anchored at each point by one of the worldships.

  The sky darkened, starless, as a black portal edged with orange-pink fire ran from horizon to horizon.

  The Ksala Aksenna had come to Cedar.

  Bill thought of an eyeless, mouthless shark of black fire, mated to a nest of black serpents, frilled with dozens of delicate-seeming fins edged in orange radiance. Like many deadly things, it was lovely in its own shape.

  Bill’s mind tried to process its sheer size and couldn’t. The creature coiled tightly within its portal, one long pseudopod drifting slowly down toward the diplomatic district.

  The Sonta ships did not seem to be blowing up escaping human ships, even the ones piloted by idiots who tried firing on them. Human pulse cannons and other weaponry dissipated far outside the passive, waiting worldships. And why should they fire back? Aksenna was here. Let the rats run.

  Bill’s float-cycle shuddered gently as its ground sensors kept it from crashing. Bill groaned. Only one possibly safe place left on the planet: the Camalian Embassy.

  He snarled a curse and pointed the cycle north again.

  Fifty-Two

  MORO WOKE KNOWING he was naked and collared again, in an enclosed, warm space. He lay on his right side on an irregular pile of cushions, head pillowed on another cushion. A slight, almost subsonic vibration shivered through the padding.

  He kept his eyes closed, body limp, breathing steady. The new collar didn’t press against his neck like Kott’s bulky arena collar. This one was light, sleek, almost a necklace.

  Kott was dead. So Lyton probably had him. How? Moro remembered speaking to Channel 98’s Shannon. Choking. His vision closing into a black-edged tunnel.

  Lyton Sardis.

  The old terror still carried all its attendant memories, but Moro had barriers now. Killing Bazo had helped, just as killing Vance had helped. Eight years under Kott’s control had taught Moro when and how to fight and when to submit. Kott’s betrayal had stripped Moro’s illusions of freedom, but Kott’s last mercy had given him a chance to escape. Val had helped, and sweet Cama. And Hegen’s revelations.

  I’m part Sonta, Moro thought. Lyton knew it all along. The very reason he took me. But he may not know which Sonta. And at least one star-eater deceived him for years, using Kott and me.

  “Cama,” Moro tried silently. His mind was empty of her warmth. Nor could he feel Val’s clips in his loose hair.

  Alone again. But Sonta, and that was knowledge he would not waste.

  “Moro,” said Lyton’s voice all around him. “I know you’re awake.”

  Fifty-Three

  THE AUTOMATIC LIGHTS surrounding the embassy came on, triggered by the new darkness. Hegen heard distant alarm claxons.

  Deljou Shannon huddled against Hegen, who put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s all right, missy,” he muttered as they looked up. “Don’t panic, none of you. We’re not dead yet.”

  “You’ve dealt with these things before?” Shannon’s voice cracked.

  “Not this one,” said Hegen. “The ‘thing’ is a Sera of great power, you’ll be wise to remember.”

  The ambassador stalked over. “Well, if she jars the ground when she touches down, she’ll kill us whether she wants to or not.”

  Hegen saw a greenish pallor under her brown skin. “Then someone should tell the Sera,” said Hegen, disengaging from the reporter and stepping to a clear area. “Get me an amplifier and shine lights on me, Ambassador. Have everyone else shut the hell up.”

  Blinded by spot
lights, Hegen lifted his head toward the descending darkness. He waved his arms for good measure and hoped his amplified voice wouldn’t set off the damned bomb. “Sera Aksenna, we have both been duped by the Ksala Aiyon. I’m Dr. Adam Hegen, and I helped keep your grandson alive while Aiyon hid him from you. If you want to talk, you’ll have to land softly. Please don’t vibrate the ground. There’s a bomb under us.”

  A spear of orange-dotted darkness sliced downward with a soft, crackling hiss. As Hegen spoke, the appendage was only one hundred feet above the embassy lawn. It slowed and separated into a fall of black, sparkling mist. The mist pulled back just six inches shy of the grass and recurved on itself, the tip spiraling like a black, fire-edged flower bud. It unfurled around a flicker of white fire at its core.

  The edges became thin, fiery ribbons edging a filmy black cloak. It fluttered from the shoulders of a pale, black-haired woman not quite five feet tall. Unveiled, plainly dressed in dull black, she was lovely and instantly recognizable to anyone from Ventana Township, even with her eye sockets currently filled with orange-pink fire.

  “You must be Anya’s mother,” said Hegen, bowing. “Well met, Sera Aksenna.”

  “Another dawnfly,” she said in slightly accented Terran Standard. “Dr. Hegen, are you still Aiyon’s creature?”

  “I never knew my patron was a Ksala until last night. My loyalty has been to Moro Dalgleish, Anya’s son. I took whatever coin offered to help keep him alive and sane.”

  Orange eyes darkened to malevolent embers. “Terrani plots! I know Tena warned these Camali weaklings to scatter if they valued their lives. Why should I care about a bomb menacing them? Where is it?”

  “A hundred feet below us,” said Hegen. “Left by human folk with scarcely a better opinion of Camalians. It’s set to go off at noon. Sooner, if it’s jarred.”

  “Nuclear?” she asked, her glowing eyes studying the ground below her feet. “How quaint. I see it.” She looked up at Hegen. “Where is my grandson?”

  “Taken again, by the man who stole him the first time,” said Hegen. “And his new mate with him. We’re trying to work out where they’re being taken. If we die, what we know dies with us.”

  “Ah,” said Aksenna, smiling. “I know this game. You bargain information for your lives. A son of my line mated? With what?”

  “A Camalian youth, Sera Aksenna.”

  Her mouth twisted in doubt or disgust. “One of these?”

  “One who saved his life last night, and one whom you would find very interesting,” said Hegen. “I believe he shares some tendencies with Merrick, Sera. And he is a Camalian Royal, bound close to Cama herself. Cama will strike bargains with you for his safe return.”

  Aksenna shrugged. “Cama is a little golden shadow hiding behind a race of apes.”

  The ambassador started to say something. Hegen waved her silent, never looking away from the Ksala in Sonta shape. As long as he didn’t look behind her, at her cloak turning into the long tendril curling down from her true form, it was easy to think he dealt with a human. “Sera Aksenna, please believe me, we want the same thing. Moro safely back among us.”

  “And you will help me find him if I neutralize this weapon?” asked the tiny Sonta woman.

  “Yes, Sera Aksenna,” said Hegen.

  She eyed the ground again. “Done. Someone has drained the pipes below, but some water remains between me and the device. And humans and Camali. Tell the people to back off.”

  The ambassador relayed commands.

  “Wait!” said Shannon. “Ambassador Antonin, is there anyone down there with recording equipment?” She turned to face the Ksala. “What will you do with the bomb, Sera Aksenna?”

  “Eat it, of course,” said the Ksala. “Why waste its energy? You would have your people record me doing so?”

  Shannon managed a very proper bow. “Yes, Sera Aksenna. That will discredit those who left it. Having visual proof of your power can only boost the respect the League feels toward you and yours.”

  Aksenna laughed, a low, wicked sound, making Hegen’s skin crawl. “And make of me a hero, to match my cleansing of a begrimed world? Do not imagine me something I am not, ape-woman. I came here to scourge this planet free of all life.”

  “And yet we still live, Sera Aksenna,” said Hegen, elbowing Shannon back. “Please. Wouldn’t you rather find Moro?”

  The Ksala lifted her delicate chin to say something and stopped. She sniffed. “That smell. I know it.”

  Shannon held out her steaming mug. “Hot chocolate, Sera Aksenna. I haven’t touched this one yet.”

  Aksenna’s slim white hands lifted it away without touching Shannon’s fingers. “My consorts would chide me, fearing poison toward my Vessel,” the Ksala said wryly, breathing the steam. “But I remember this. Merrick gave me some.” She closed fiery eyes, sipping the drink. “Yes,” she sighed a long minute later, her smile calmer. “I remember.”

  Hegen wondered if she knew it when the black mist curled down around her hands, devouring the porcelain mug and the liquid within. The molten orange-red glow around her paled. The effect was certainly not lost on Shannon’s recording team, who quietly caught everything. Aksenna lifted her arms, catching double handfuls of the black mist. She drew it close around her. In another second, the Sonta woman was gone. The black-and-salmon-pink flower bud turned its tip down through the grass.

  Fifty-Four

  NO, MORO THOUGHT.

  Without opening his eyes, he reached behind his neck. His fingers found the catch of the new collar, and a long, flexible metallic loop big enough to slip over a man’s hand. Moro dug his fingernails into the catch and tried to wrench it apart.

  Agony stabbed through his whole body. He heard his own screams echo in the chamber, heard Lyton shouting at him, but Moro kept his fingers locked. If he could trigger pleasure to counter the pain—

  But only pain and more pain flooded into him, forcing his fingers to slacken at last. He collapsed, gasping into the cushions.

  “Don’t be stupid, Moro,” said Lyton at last. “This one won’t come off as easily as Kott’s. You’ll get no pleasure unless I will it. Did you like the pain? That’s one of the lowest settings.”

  Moro blinked away the sparks in his vision and sat up, scanning his prison in one swift look. It was a rounded, clear tank twelve feet long and nine high, its lower portion padded or strewn with pale-gray cushions. The ends terminated in gray bulkheads, also padded, access ports revealed in the contours of the upholstery seams. The clear walls were dual layered, a faint blue radiance swirling between inner and outer walls. The blue glow did not conceal the dim cargo bay beyond, the long gray leather divan arranged beside the container, or the man who sat upon it.

  “Welcome back aboard Persepolis, Moro,” said Lyton, one leg crossed over the other. He wore a brown medic’s outfit, and his hair was mussed. His voice came to Moro from speakers in the container bulkheads.

  “Lyton,” Moro hissed, a universe of hate stored up in two syllables. Lyton expected him to cower behind cushions, no doubt, like the scared boy he’d been. So Moro pushed back his shoulders and crossed his knees into a meditative lotus stance, hands relaxed on his thighs, neither ashamed of nor brazen about his nudity.

  Lyton arched an eyebrow. “I apologize for your accommodations. I’d have put you back in our bed in the stateroom but for your current contamination.”

  “You mean Cama?” Moro asked, grinning. So Lyton knew and couldn’t figure out a way to remove Cama’s symbionts? Good. If he had, Moro wouldn’t be in the isolation chamber. “Did I derail some of your plans, then?”

  “Some.” Lyton nodded at a point scored. “But you also opened whole new possibilities for me. Let me congratulate you on your wedding, by the way.” The divan sported a com-console in one arm, Moro saw. Lyton punched one code on the screen. Light stabbed down from the cargo bay roof as a side door opened.

  A large man wheeled in a seven-foot-high bubble, a smaller twin to the one holding Moro. It swi
rled with the same pale-blue radiance. Val was inside it, eyes closed, still dressed in his hastily donned formal robes. Moro even caught a glimpse of the bulky black tech belt under folds of amber silk.

  “Valier Antonin ne’Cama,” said Lyton, caressing the words.

  “You son of a bitch,” said Moro, clenching his hands until they ached. “If you’ve killed him, hurt him—”

  “He’s just asleep,” said Lyton. “He’s safe enough. For now. I’m sure you can guess the price of his future welfare?” Lyton held up his left hand, showing the platinum and black sapphire ring. “Remember my access, Moro? Remember what it allows me to do? Remember your Christmas present?”

  “Stop this,” Moro whispered. “Don’t. Please!”

  “Terise says this new ring and collar are much more sensitive. They still don’t transmit much sensation to me. Not a problem if I’m near enough to watch. Shall we try them out on your lovely husband?”

  “Damn you, Lyton,” said Moro. “Don’t touch him. Let him go!”

  “No. You made him a part of this, Moro. On the roof of Vaclav 18 last night, or wherever you allowed him to fuck you. Whatever happens to him now is ultimately your responsibility. So listen to me carefully while I tell you what I expect from you, and what I offer in return.”

  Moro shook his head. “I know your ‘offers,’ Lyton. Lies. All of them. I heard your whispering lies for a year. What makes you think I’d believe you now?”

  “Ah, Moro. In spite of Terise’s doubts, I’m glad you have your voice again,” said Lyton. He leaned back along the divan. “We can speak without you hiding behind the stammers and silence you used in the arena. Stop your tantrums and listen to me.”

  Moro glowered. “I can’t stop you from talking.”

  “I obviously can’t marry you now and have it recognized by the League. But I have on board Persepolis a printed document unalterable and indestructible, once it is signed by the two of us. Two copies of this document are linked to the master document via M-space entanglement; one is with the Cedar Premier Roberto Chu, and one will be delivered to Empress Liatana Antonin ne’Cama on Camonde. The document makes you, Moro Dalgleish Antonin, legal heir to a controlling sixty-eight-percent share of Rio Sardis and all its affiliate companies, for a total net worth of approximately three hundred trillion credits. The document also begins the legal process of transforming Rio Sardis from a League corporation to one paying taxes to the Camalian Commonwealth. The League won’t like it, but they can’t fight it, either. The Terra Prima components of Rio Sardis won’t like it, but my company has outgrown their limited viewpoint and usefulness.”