Moro's Price

by M. Crane Hana

  Quietly, efficiently, Sera Basrali and Sergeant Acton donned masks and protective gloves. From his command screen, Lyton made the bubble’s clear lid swing up and back.

  Moro watched the two swiftly remove Val’s belt and clothes. Every layer was patted, scanned, rolled up, and placed back into the isolation bubble at Val’s feet. Acton scanned Val’s limp body, opening the slack mouth and probing inside with gloved fingers. Scans of Val’s nose and hair showed nothing. Acton lifted Val’s shrunken cock and limp testicles, checking underneath. Then Acton knelt and draped Val facedown over his knee, spreading the youth’s tight buttocks.

  Basrali selected a thin, narrow plastic probe from her unrolled canvas kit. She doped it with a string of lubricant.

  Moro’s protest died unsaid in his throat. Lyton had been waiting for it.

  “We have to make sure,” said Lyton.

  Blushing but professional, Basrali fed the probe into Val’s sphincter, checking results on her scanner and showing them to Acton. After a few more seconds, Basrali shook her head and gently slid out the probe. “No hidden tools or nanite skeins, Sero Sardis,” she said tonelessly, wrapping the probe in a plastic sheet and dropping it into the isolation bubble.

  “Fifty-five seconds left. Sergeant Acton, now,” said Lyton.

  Moro saw a film-shielded door widen in his chamber’s opposite bulkhead. The film was a resistant field, gray as the upholstery, parting around Val’s slumped body and Acton’s arms. When Val was completely inside the chamber, Acton withdrew. The film shrank to a seam in the bulkhead.

  Acton and Basrali tossed their masks and gloves into the slowly sealing isolation bubble.

  “I’ll release you now, Moro,” said Lyton. “Don’t be stupid. As you said yourself, our husband’s future welfare is in your hands now.”

  Moro had shaky control of his body again. But before he could stagger to Val, Moro saw the director turn away from the containment bubble.

  As the cargo bay door opened to Persepolis’s crew corridor, Lyton said, “Sera Basrali, remain.”

  The young woman paused as Acton and the other men wheeled out the smaller isolation bubble. “Sero Sardis?” she asked, not turning around.

  “No,” said Moro, loud enough to hear his voice echo in the bay.

  “No?” asked Lyton. “Moro, you’re in no position to object to anything I do.”

  “You don’t really want her, you want me. And Val. And you can’t have us—not yet. At best, she’ll be a distraction. At worst, an impediment.”

  “I could have her mouth. Or take her from behind while I watch you,” said Lyton, enjoying this new game.

  “But her body won’t be mine,” Moro repeated. “You’ll want to make her come. And scream from it. I know you, Lyton. Mere physical conquest doesn’t mean as much to you without the submission of your victim’s pleasure. And while you’re taking her, how much will you miss? Will you miss the moment I breach Val? Or the moment I come at his command? At least with your own hands you know you can control your distractions.”

  The director’s breath sounded harsh in the speakers. Moro kept the amazement off his face when Lyton’s eyes lowered. Another win?

  “You may retire, Sera Basrali. Go over Valier’s personal effects again and make certain he’s set up no time-delayed activation beacons.”

  “At once, Sero Sardis,” she said and hurried away.

  “Your chivalry won’t buy you any rescue or gratitude,” said Lyton when the door had closed. “She’s crèche raised. She knows her place as a servant of Rio Sardis. So why do it?”

  “To annoy you, Lyton,” said Moro, kneeling beside Val. “And for decency’s sake. After all, you didn’t really want her, did you?”

  He shut out the sound of Lyton’s laughter and waited for Val to wake.

  Sixty

  HEGEN LEANED AGAINST a conference room wall, watching the newest addition to the Camalian drama. In the opposite wall, a holo screen activated. Professor Maitland Trevannis Antonin peered out. His dark green gaze swept past Hegen without recognition and settled on the ambassador.

  “Alys, what in Reason’s name have you fallen into on Cedar?” asked the blond-bearded Camalian man. “Lia’s just ordered me home, Cama’s raving nonsense when I can reach her at all, and I felt breakthrough last night. We all did.”

  “Professor—” Alys began.

  “And now Lia and the Parliament have issued a League-wide evacuation order for all Camalians. Do you have any idea how much more time we need at this dig site alone? We’ve hardly mapped a tenth of this city!”

  “Professor, I’ve lost our son,” said the ambassador.

  “You’ve what?” Maitland Trevannis Antonin rubbed the bridge of his narrow, hooked nose. Hegen saw traces of Valier in Maitland’s feathery hair, the set of his eyes and bird-wing-arched brows. His long blond hair was slightly darker than Val’s and pulled back in a tail. “Lost him how? He’s not dead. Cama would feel it, surely?”

  “We don’t know. I’m working with some allies who think he’s been stolen and shielded away from Cama somehow. We need to find him, and not just him. Er, Professor. Val got married this morning.”

  “Ah,” said Trevannis, smiling. “That would explain the breakthrough. He couldn’t go with the Potentials Cama already found? Who is she?”

  “It’s ‘he,’ actually. You’d better sit down, Professor.”

  Sixty-One

  AFTERWARD, ZARIN BASRALI could never quite recall how she talked Sergeant Acton into letting her take Valier’s tech belt into her own small cabin. She remembered the door sealing behind her. An extra click hinted an outside lock was engaged. They’d let her out when they needed her again.

  She was not beyond Lyton Sardis’s notice yet.

  Basrali focused on the charcoal-gray coverlet of her narrow bunk. Her hands shook, even after she sat down.

  Lyton Sardis used people as weapons and tools. So did Bill. Both of them had warned her in their own way. She’d been prepared to fuck the virile and handsome director until the moment arrived. Then she realized no one escaped unscathed from Lyton’s embrace. Or ever just had sex with him.

  Lord of Light, she prayed silently, keep me from ill words, ill thoughts, ill deeds. I was close to the edge there. She didn’t pray often. Not for real.

  Basrali remembered a vibrant baritone echoing in the cargo bay: “No.” Moro Dalgleish’s reasoned case against Lyton’s raping her as a convenience. She remembered the Antonin prince’s sweet, unconscious face. The same face, anguished and determined, that she and Bill had seen only hours earlier on a stolen float-cycle. She’d heard enough today to guess Moro’s fate. Lyton Sardis’s peerless new half-Sonta body would be combat trained, its life span extended to a Camalian range or beyond, and apparently gifted with a voice even more hypnotic than its body.

  No wonder the Diamond had been made to stammer!

  She thought of the two captives, reaching for some last hours of happiness before Lyton tore them apart.

  I’m loyal to Rio Sardis, Basrali thought and began taking stock of Valier’s sneaky devices. I have Bill’s bracelet, and now this. And I’m good, probably better at this than Valier Antonin.

  She didn’t need free run of Persepolis. Not when she’d hacked its security systems even before they left Cedar’s atmosphere.

  Sixty-Two

  “AMBASSADOR ANTONIN,” ASKED the aide in the doorway. “Vilam Volker Sardis is here to see you.”

  “Volker Sardis?” Alys repeated. “Why? To beg mercy of the Cedar courts?”

  “Now then, Ambassador,” said one of the Cedar representatives. “He’s not his father, I’ve heard.”

  Hegen glanced up from a tabletop display of Sonta artifacts currently held by Cedar University. He missed having Deljou Shannon and her crew nearby, but this meeting had been deemed private by the Cedar government. Shannon was no doubt on the way back to Channel 98’s headquarters.

  “Send him in, Sergeant,” said Professor Trevannis. Wherever t
he Camalian Shield was, Hegen saw canvas tent walls ripple in strong wind. Storm-gray darkness roiled beyond the clear plastic windows.

  “Another Sardis?” Alys grimaced now. “Why not?” The embassy chamber was crowded with masked Camalians, Cedar officials, and three Sonta ruthlessly weeding out which artifacts were contraband violations of the hundred-year-old treaty. Currently most of the humans were more nervous of the still-masked and mantled Odasu than the tiny Vessel of Aksenna. All three Sonta seemed amused by that fear.

  Hegen found himself at ease with giant Odasu, elegant Savinilan, and the orange-eyed Aksenna. Odasu had established hot chocolate did no harm to his charges. As long as the chocolate held out, Hegen decided, Aksenna was less likely to have a tantrum. An opportunity for trade, he thought.

  The door opened again on a tall, slim figure in formfitting black. Black-gloved hands showed themselves empty and then tapped the sides of the flying helmet. It segmented backward and down into a high collar.

  Sardis’s son flaunted the silver hair at his temples and the darker space-tan of a man often traveling under different suns. His eyes were brown, not gray. They tracked over the room as ruthlessly and quickly as his father’s might have. He bowed to black-shrouded Aksenna in her corner seat.

  Hegen watched her orange eyes lighten under the hood’s shadow.

  “Sero Sardis,” said Alys. “Forgive me for wondering why you are here.”

  “Ambassador Antonin. I’m the one who sent financial data to Cedar Revenue this morning, regarding my father’s fraudulent ownership claims against Moro Dalgleish. I’m also the one who has two different locator beacons on my father’s ship, and an ally on board. I have a chase ship stocked and ready to launch as soon as my father’s transport drops out of M-space.”

  “Why?” Alys asked.

  The younger Sardis crossed the room and stopped four feet from her. “My parents are endangering my company’s good name and financial future. I looked the other way when Lyton stole Moro Dalgleish off Ventana. I ignored Terise’s unsavory experiments in neural control until she and Lyton used me as a laboratory test subject. I didn’t learn what was really going on until early this morning. Lyton Sardis plans to take over Moro’s body, the same way I believe he’s been using clones for the last hundred-odd years.”

  One of the Cedar officials stood up slowly, brushing away the assistance of two younger men. “A great offense against League principles. Have you proof, Vilam?”

  Sardis betrayed his recognition only by a slightly deeper bow. “Premier Chu. If we can catch my father before he completes the transfer, we’ll have plenty of proof. I have agents looking for the latest batch of Lyton’s human clones. He’ll have no backup plan if he loses Moro.”

  “He can’t take over a Camalian body,” Alys began.

  “He might, if he does it while Cama can’t see him do it,” said Sardis, crossing to the table. “Somewhere naturally shielded. Quite possibly an unknown Sonta site within the League. Someplace related to an artifact I saw Lyton force Moro to touch once. A dark green disc—”

  Within his viewing screen, Professor Trevannis shook his head. “We found something like that on Ventana, but it’s in Cedar University’s collection, waiting to be extradited to the Sonta. It should be in the room with you.”

  Vilam Sardis looked toward the table full of artifacts. “Is it? Let me guess: Rio Sardis or one of its shell companies has been generously funding Cedar University’s xeno-archaeological programs for what, a hundred years? How do you naive research types not get taken by every cheap crook around? Or is this more of a Camalian-specific psychological fault?”

  “How do you mean?” asked the professor.

  “There are so few naturally nice people in the universe. It is incumbent upon us utter bastards to protect them whenever we can. And look, here’s a whole Commonwealth full of them! You did yourselves no favors by breeding out aggression.”

  “We didn’t,” said Alys Antonin.

  That earned her a crooked grin. “Ah yes. I’ve heard about your crown prince.” Sardis turned to face the premier. “Premier Chu, did your associates bring the artifact?”

  One of the premier’s aides removed a small paper box from an attaché case. Once opened, the box revealed a nest of fluffy white spun fibers. The aide started to don white protective gloves.

  “Don’t bother,” said Vilam Sardis and scooped an object from the spun filler. He tossed it in an underhand throw toward the Sonta.

  Odasu grabbed it before Aksenna could.

  “You tell me,” said Sardis. “Sonta or fake?”

  Aksenna pushed the silky black hood down over her shoulders. She leaned over the disc in her giant consort’s hands. She apparently read something in its unknown carvings, for she flinched back into Savinilan’s embrace. “I know that name,” she whispered in Standard. “But I should feel it too.” She reached out one white fingertip, tapping on the disc. “It’s glass. Cast from the original. It should move, change shape in some way. And I should not be able to touch it without it reacting to me.”

  “Moro said it opened once,” Hegen offered, sketching a design on the table screen. “Like wings unfolding from the top. And a black dot inside, surrounded by more carvings.”

  “Ah,” said Aksenna, lips curling in a snarl. “I thought so. Your Lyton Sardis hunts something very dangerous indeed.”

  “What?” asked Alys and the premier at the same time.

  “I am a Ksala. A star-eater. You have seen me over your planet,” Aksenna began over Odasu’s grumbled protest. “Even my visible shape is a tiny physical manifestation of my true self. Most of my mass exists within another dimension. Now consider. I am small for my kind. There have been other Ksaloni, roaming this and nearby galaxies, who would dwarf me many times over. They are thought to be dead or vanished utterly from this universe. But one of them was close enough to mortals, twelve thousand years ago, to leave signs and tokens behind him. His chosen mortals might summon him again, if there was need.”

  “Oh, Lyton,” whispered Vilam Sardis. “You incredible, brilliant fool.”

  “I think I know where they’re going,” said the professor. “One of three places, at least.” At the sudden silence, Trevannis shrugged. “I needed to know the shape of the opened disc. Then I remembered the ionization blocking Cama’s senses. She didn’t panic the last few times because I was in plain sight of other Camalians when she lost contact with me. But obviously someone from Rio Sardis saw potential in our field notes. The sites are all on backwater worlds in underdeveloped parts of the League. Much like Ventana, they had little land life but thriving young ocean ecosystems. They have strong magnetic fields for their size, driven by very dense iron cores. Small ruins are in one geologically stable location, often near a standing stone or a cliff face cut with a certain symbol. Ventana did not have the ionized shielding or the symbol, but our dig there uncovered a few small artifacts. Among them, your key.”

  “What symbol? And what does it open?” asked Hegen.

  “Doom,” said Aksenna.

  “This,” said Professor Trevannis, bringing up a new image on the screen beside him.

  Hegen saw a dark basalt wall, strongly side lit by low orange sunlight. The perpetually dusty professor stood beside it, holding a black-and-white measuring stick for proportion.

  Into the stone was incised a barred spiral four feet across. Superimposed in two-inch-high relief, a long, rippling, vertical shape seven inches wide and nearly three feet high eclipsed the spiral’s center. Each tapered end of the shape came to a sharply curved point aiming left at the top and right at the bottom. Hegen thought of an earthworm or a microscopic nematode. Then he saw the design carved into the very center of the worm shape.

  A circle cut deep. Two hemispheres cut slightly less deep, swinging out like wings from the top third of the disk.

  “This is the Serpent-stone of Vittori. We didn’t see this mark on Ventana,” said Trevannis, “but it’s on three other worlds, the ones wh
ose sites are under locally ionized radiation. There are small, struggling human colonies on two of those worlds. They’re not doing well. Their decline can be measured to the hour they started trying to excavate too deeply around these marked sites.”

  Alys took a step backward, her fingers going for the gun on her belt. She aborted the movement with a helpless shrug. “Something left safeguards? And Lia let you dig there? Professor, what is that symbol?”

  “We disturbed nothing—” said Trevannis.

  “It is precisely what it claims to be,” Aksenna answered, hands in her lap and shoulders hunched. Her eyes were dim orange embers. “It marks territory once held by a very large Ksala.”

  “What is its name, Sera Aksenna?” asked Bill.

  “It left names behind long ago. Its last recorded name translates to ‘White Storm.’ And your Lyton plans to use Moro to find it, wake it, and remind it of ancient battles. All because my Vessel Imraithi has more genius than common sense.”

  “Oh?” asked Hegen.

  Aksenna’s mouth opened. She paused, silent, real fear marring her lovely face.

  “I know,” Trevannis said. “Anya told me once. She had a little human genetic material in her, culled from the preserved blood of a human once known to the precursors of the Sonta. A man who lived and died eighty thousand years ago.”

  “What was he? A caveman on Old Earth?” asked Vilam Sardis.

  “No,” said Aksenna, reaching toward her neck. “A priest who took pity on a few thousand human political prisoners marooned on a dying world, victims of a militant religious order very similar to your Terra Prima. Through the efforts of a female Ksala almost near death, those humans were sent into an alternate reality and a new world. Our reality, where they became some of the Sonta ancestors. The priest was the first human to love and bond with the Ksala who became White Storm.” From under her tunic, she fished out a crystal pendant on a black metal chain. “Lyton Sardis never found this, but I think he’s seen pictures of it, from a Sonta traitor now dead. I took it from an ancient Sonta shrine, along with a vial of blood sealed against time. And with it, while I slept one century, Imraithi made Anyatisa.”