by Blaze Ward
Eveth turned her attention to the keyboard on the desk before her and typed furiously.
Suddenly, the screen flashed bright red and a beep chimed angrily at her.
WARNING. Information classified. Enter Level-7 security authorization to proceed.
“Fardel,” she grumbled angrily under her breath.
A Constable like her was only Level-3.
“What are you trying to do, Baker?” he asked warily, standing and walking around towards her side of the desk.
She showed him the description of the clothing the human was supposedly wearing, written hurriedly as the informer had spoken.
“See?” she asked. “Red jacket. Black and gold design on the chest. I was trying to look something up about the humans that I thought I remembered, but the system wants a Level-7 clearance. Not worth trying to ask a Senior Inspector. They’ll just tell me I’m imagining things.”
“What are you imagining, Eveth?” Jackeith questioned quietly.
“A uniform,” she said, flipping back through her notebook unsuccessfully. “Or something. It was part of a throwaway line that one Inspector made, back when they briefed us about humans during the first scare, last winter. Damn it, this notebook is too new. I’ll have to look it up when I get home tonight.”
“Here,” Grodray said, leaning over her shoulder and typing something into the keyboard.
The screen flashed a welcome and brought up an image of a Vanir male. Except it wasn’t. This was a human.
And Jackeith Grodray had typed his password into…
“How in the nine hells did you do that?” she stared up at him in surprise. “That was a Level-7 authorization.”
“Uh huh,” he smiled back serenely. Like always.
“But you’re only a Senior Constable,” she continued, confused and maybe a little frustrated. “That should only grant you Level-4, maybe Level-5 at best.”
“I only ever wanted to be a Senior Constable, Eveth,” he answered calmly. “Plus, I had to do some things several years ago. This was back before we were partners. They had to read me in on some very dangerous secrets.”
Eveth flushed with a moment of pure avarice at the thought of the crimes you could solve with that level of clearance.
“So what have we got?” Grodray continued, still serene, damn it.
Eveth pointed at the screen, going back and forth between her notes and the image.
“White pants,” she observed. “Check. Dark red tunic with weird gold things on the shoulders. Check. Black background a foot wide, center of chest, with some weird logo in gold in the middle. Check. The description also included three white rings around the black, separated by red lines.”
“Three, you said?” he asked in a voice suddenly gone cold and stern.
She looked up again, feeling her face harden. It matched Jackeith’s in that.
“Yes, three,” she replied. “What’s going on, Grodray?”
She watched him call up a menu item quickly and toggle something. The image changed, and now the chest had three rings around the black.
“The thing in the middle are two letters, Baker,” he said carefully, glancing up to make sure they were still alone in the room. “From the principle language on Earth. SP. Stands for Sky Patrol. Part of the Earth Force that humans have over their single solar system.”
“A military?” she asked, suddenly scrambling to her feet. She needed to be out on the streets, if there really was a human, a warrior, loose in this city.
“No,” Grodray placated her with one hand and a calm voice. “That’s the uniform of an Earth Force Sky Patrol Field Agent, Baker.”
“Meaning?” she asked.
“He’s a cop, like us.”
Underworld
“What do we know?” Marc asked harshly as the two Warreth females entered his personal chambers.
He generally didn’t like dragging everyone into the throne room, except for special occasions. That kept the mystique going. This was business.
“Got a lead, but we’ve got a problem, Maximus,” Maiair replied.
They were sisters, Maiair and Yooyar. Primarily crimson in their feathers, with black and white highlights. Maiair was taller, but only slightly, and a year older.
Yooyar was probably the more dangerous of the two, however, the older sister was the cannier opponent.
“What happened?” Marc asked, moving across the outer chamber to grab a bottle of wine.
It wasn’t worth making a scene with these two. They were loyal, and could be lethal if he needed to point them at someone needing to be disciplined. He grabbed a glass and poured some wine into it while he listened.
“Morty and Xiomber indeed found themselves a human,” Maiair said. “The description fits.”
“Where?” Marc looked up as the glass was full. He didn’t bother offering any to the sisters. They wouldn’t be here long enough to drink any, and this wasn’t a social call.
“Orgoth Vortai,” the older sister replied. “Witness puts them in Punarvasu a couple of days ago, but they’ve gone dark.”
“They’re on the run,” Marc said. “They can’t get far.”
“Somebody made the human,” Yooyar interjected. “The Constabulary got a tip. We’ve spotted a pair of cops in the place where Morty and Xiomber were confirmed.”
Marc swirled the glass and sniffed the bouquet as he thought. Suddenly becoming a genius was incredibly useful if he needed to solve a math or physics problem, but not in the messy, complicated tides that represented the street. Still, he could use this to his advantage.
“Follow the cops,” he decided. “Keep an eye out for the two traitors and the human, but let the cops do the leg work. If we get lucky, they’ll flush the trio for us and we can swoop in. If not, they’ll all end up in a cell somewhere and we can take care of them.”
“Second problem, boss,” Maiair said. “We’ve been down in the lab. Morty cooked everything good. Sabotaged the controllers to fry all the panels when they completed the jump. Plus, about half the generators overloaded and functionally melted.”
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“Fixable,” she replied. “But it will take time to build a whole new, completely-illegal, wormhole generator. Plus, if the authorities are jumpy about humans being around, someone is going to be looking at all the parts vendors, wondering who brought him here. If we suddenly buy a lot of gear, it’s likely to show up on someone’s radar.”
“Understood,” he said. “If the cops do catch them, one of those two shits are likely to offer us up as a way to either cut their sentence, or make sure that we end up in the same cell with them.”
“So what do we do?” Maiair asked.
“Let’s get ahead of the curve,” he replied, taking a drink as he cycled down all the branches of the new decision tree faster than anyone he had ever met could match. “Keep together the hard core of the organization. Just the twenty or so we’ll need for action. Have everyone else go to ground as fast as you can shut this facility down. Assume a police raid in five minutes and wipe everything. Put the A-team on the transport and get us jumped over to Orgoth Vortai as a tour group.”
“Why there?” Yooyar asked.
Warreth didn’t have a mouth that could be used to communicate emotions, like humans did. They used the feathered headcrest instead. The younger sister was confused, but that was inexperience. She had only joined the organization barely long enough ago to meet Cinnra, before Marc supplanted the old boss. She and her sister had understood which way the winds were blowing.
She was trying to figure out which way he was moving, so she didn’t put a foot wrong, rather than challenging his authority. Learning, which was good. There were still a few of Cinnra’s people he would need to ease out.
Or arrange lethal accidents for.
“There is no place better than anyplace else,” he explained. “But they’re likely to run, so we need to be in a position to give chase. Either them or the cops. This is about bei
ng close enough to force their decision curve the way we want it.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding firmly.
She didn’t understand, but Marc expected her sister to fill in the details once they left.
He nodded them out and drank more wine.
Having Sky Patrol here changed things. The cops just might listen, if they knew what Dankworth really represented, and Sky Patrol wouldn’t give up on their prey.
He should know. Packed carefully away, he still had his old uniform.
Witness for the Prosecution
“You’re sure?” Eveth asked the Borren publican of the tea house, pointing at the picture in Grodray’s hands.
She and Grodray had ended up back in the office with the tea house keeper. It was a tiny space with high ceilings and little art on the walls. The door was open, but that just let them see back into the kitchen, rather than the public space.
They had printed the image of a Sky Patrol Field Agent, minus all the explanations of what the thing actually was, but even then, it was never allowed out of Grodray’s immediate control.
“Indeed, officer,” the man said, tapping the chest. “The design was quiet interesting. I have considered doing it as a piece of art. Could I get a copy of that?”
“No,” Grodray said with quiet emphasis. “In fact, if you were to put it up, Accord Security might take exception. I’d rather your shop not be shut down for potentially-criminal behavior. What say you?”
“Oh,” the man said.
Eveth watched the manager blush, which was always interesting on one of the Borren. They were the standard biped design, but exceptionally tall, often nearing eight feet in the male, and over seven for a female. But they were also stick-thin. At a full six-foot-seven, Eveth probably outweighed the man, despite only coming up to his shoulder.
The eyes were large, compared to most species, with a long, flat, narrow nose, and a tiny mouth, but it allowed them to see in far lower light than most species.
And they were pacifists, as a rule. Great shopkeepers, though.
He leaned back as politely as he could, putting emotional space between himself in comfortable robes, and Eveth and her partner.
“And they left after an hour?” Eveth pressed, raising her voice just enough to keep the shopkeeper’s attention.
“Indeed,” he agreed. “Keelee served them, and they left a good tip.”
Eveth turned to look back to the kitchen.
“Keelee,” she said in a loud voice at the few employees lingering and probably listening.
One of them looked up in shock, while the others edged away. She was a young Grace. Her tentacles still weren’t to their full growth yet, so not that long out of school. She turned utterly umber under the force of Eveth’s gaze.
“Join us?” Eveth ordered in a polite fiction that only sounded like a question.
She had left her jacket in the car today, so her armored bodysuit with the badge over her heart was obvious. Normally, a nice tunic covered it with softer lines, but today, the harshness of the blue-gray scales stood out. As did the knee-high armored boots, the holster on her hip, and the utility belt normally hidden under the tunic. Eveth had tied back her hair, but the bangs needed to be cut. She blew one up to clear her eyes.
Next to her, Grodray still had his jacket on. It made him look diplomatic.
Eveth was here to play bad cop.
Keelee shuffled over, head hanging and tentacles nearly motionless with embarrassment. The rest of the employees made themselves scarce.
Eveth caught the girl under the chin with her right hand, lifted the face up to look at her. A few tentacles carefully explored Eveth’s suit, but none made it as far as her hand.
“Two Yuudixtl, and a small Vanir?” Eveth pressed, pointing at the picture. “The Vanir dressed like this?”
“Yes, sir,” Keelee answered quietly.
If anything, the young woman’s blush got worse. She nearly turned brown and her pupils dilated.
Eveth played a hunch.
“Did you taste the Vanir, Keelee?” she asked quietly.
That was frequently a major faux pas with strangers. But if he was what Grodray thought, then the stranger might not know any better.
“Girl?” the manager bellowed.
Eveth silenced the man with a hard glance. After a moment, she stepped out of the doorway to the manager’s office and pulled it shut it behind her. The Senior Constable could keep him in line.
And Grodray was a guy. He might not understand.
“You can tell me, Keelee,” Eveth said carefully. “They’re fugitives from justice, but you had no way of knowing that.”
“I did, sir,” the young woman said.
Her head would have fallen, but for Eveth holding it up. Having more than a foot of height, and the muscles to match, helped.
“What did he taste like?” Eveth asked, disguising her tone as well as she could.
Keelee didn’t need to hear Eveth’s disgust.
Some species knew no bounds, but Eveth had never considered anyone that wasn’t a Vanir. And precious few of them.
Most men were either too timid around her, or too competitive.
But Keelee had stopped breathing.
Eveth nodded.
“He wasn’t a Vanir, was he?” she asked.
“No, sir,” the girl said. “I’ve never tasted anyone like him. So warm. So purple. So dreamy.”
Shit, they really did have a human on the run in the Accord of Souls. And a witness.
“You can never tell anyone about him, Keelee,” Eveth said. “Except me or the Senior Constable in the office. Not your family. Not your coworkers. Not your boss. If you did, and I found out, someone would have to arrest you and probably put you in jail for decades.”
It was a serious threat. Eveth Baker was a serious cop making it. And a decade sounded like forever when you were twenty.
“Do you understand me, Keelee?” Eveth asked, trying to be reasonable while firm.
“Yes, sir,” Keelee said. “I just couldn’t help myself. I had to find a way to taste him.”
Huh.
“Have you ever been that way before?” Eveth asked.
“No, sir,” Keelee wailed quietly. “I’ve always been a good girl. I’m still a virgin.”
“Well stay away from that creature and you’ll be safe, Keelee,” Eveth instructed. “Find yourself a good boy or girl of the Grace and make art instead.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’ve done well, Keelee,” Eveth reassured her. “Now we know where to start, so we can find them. But you need to keep our secret. Can I trust you?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Keelee brightened.
Eveth sent her on her way and knocked on the closed door.
The Grace were all about art. Being able to see, touch, taste, and smell with those tentacles meant they lived in the richest sensory world possible.
Eveth figured she’d go nuts in a hurry, surrounded by that level of sensory bombardment, all day every day, but she wasn’t an artist. Nothing like the Grace.
No, that wasn’t true. She did have an art. A passion.
Hunting down criminals and bringing them to justice.
The Senior Constable emerged a moment later, shooting the manager a significant look that probably mirrored what was on Eveth’s face. Perhaps a touch more refined and polite, but no less adamantine.
She nodded and headed for the front of the shop.
Out on the sidewalk, the sun was pleasantly warm, but not enough so that Jackeith would remove his jacket.
“What did the girl tell you?” he asked as they got some privacy.
The uniforms ensured that. The Constabulary were the Accord’s police. There were other, more dangerous agencies, hidden deeper in the shadows cast by the cops, but most people still gave them a wide berth. Eveth assumed everyone was guilty of something, however small, and could use that as leverage. She was rarely wrong.
�
��She confirms we have a human on our hands,” Eveth said. “Alien of a type she had never tasted, anyway. I didn’t tell her what he was. The manager confirmed the uniform, so we know what we’re dealing with. Where do we go from here?”
“Cinnra’s organization were the ones behind the last human scare,” Grodray mused. “But he’s no longer in the picture, according to some sources. One theory was that he did manage to recruit a human.”
“So did some other underworld organization decide to engage in an arms race?” Eveth asked. “Get their own human? But could they get a worse target than a human cop, Jackeith?”
“Maybe it wasn’t random luck on their part?” he contemplated. “Maybe it was intentional?”
“Are you nuts, Grodray?”
“Let’s employ deduction,” he began.
Eveth knew to shut up at those words. Anything she said trying to derail her partner now would just extend the conversation that much longer. He would not be budged. Not when he got like this.
She nodded, trying not to hustle him or roll her eyes.
“Suppose Cinnra got himself a human, an assassin,” Grodray pondered. “And lost control of the creature, since a human killer wouldn’t necessarily only kill the people Cinnra wanted.”
“Speculation, but sure,” Eveth injected into the spot she was supposed to say something.
“And the human killed Cinnra,” Jackeith continued. “That explains some of the upheavals and shenanigans we’ve had to deal with on various worlds. Turf war and maybe a new boss shaking things up.”
“With you so far.”
Without a single eyeroll, even.
“Who would want a human cop?” Grodray posed the million-credit question.
“Someone in Cinnra’s band of criminals who wants to cover his ass?” Eveth guessed. “They would be the only sort of people who would know how to get a human, outside of some very shadowy agencies that would have never let one run around unchaperoned. And they might want someone who wanted to take the first human down, and had the human violence to do it.”
“Holds water, Eveth,” he said.
“Fardel,” she replied. “That means we’ve got a potential race war on our hands. Two uncontrolled killers, gunning for each other, with a whole Accord worth of innocents potentially in the way.”