Star Dragon Box Set One

by Blaze Ward

  “They follow money around,” Grodray smiled. “How it comes in, when it comes out, where it goes, how it comes back. Most criminals aren’t smart enough to hide their tracks well enough from those sorts of Prime Investigators.”

  Prime Investigators. The true free agents. Had her partner called in some favors from old friends at that level? Was it that necessary? Were things that bad?

  Eveth wondered if the Accord of Souls was closer to tottering than she had ever suspected. She had always thought that crime was just a little worse than it used to be. Maybe she needed to go back generations and compare? Was that something a Prime Investigator might do?

  “Okay, so we can find corrupt politicians and the people holding their puppet strings,” Eveth said. “But that’s still going to take months. I have a feeling we have days at most. Liamssen is a geneticist. That suggests they plan to recast their human so he can hide. What do we know about human genetics?”

  Or rather, what did you know that you haven’t been able to tell me before, but which might be utterly critical right now, Jackeith?

  She saw Grodray do a lot of processing quickly, from the way his eyes shifted back and forth on some invisible horizon.

  Finally, those internal voices reached some consensus.

  “This is Level-7 stuff, Eve,” he began slowly. She nodded with the gravity of that pronouncement. “Humans are not part of the Accord of Souls. Were never modified by our ancestors, the Chaa. They look like smaller versions of the Vanir, Those Left Behind, but that’s just convergent evolution, we think.”

  “Okay,” she said, holding her breath.

  “Most geneticists can work with basic things,” he continued, pausing to glance over his shoulder to make sure they were along. “Fix problems at birth. Alter hair or skin or feather color. That sort of thing. Non-threatening to galactic order.”

  “What about the humans, Grodray?”

  “There might not be any limitations on them, Eve,” he said quietly. “They might be a blank slate onto which a geneticist with a lot of skill and no scruples might be able to paint.”

  “So those killers…”

  “Might be turned into one of us easy enough,” Grodray nodded. “Vanir are the closest match, if you want to hide. Plus you add size and mass to an already dangerous species. Look at what that human was able to do to you in his native form. Now make him my size with those muscles.”

  “Would she stop there?” Eveth asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Would a criminal geneticist just stop at making him Vanir, Grodray?” Eveth asked. “If there are no limits, would she go crazy? Most doctors have some level of god-complex, trying to either make the world a better place, or prove that they are smarter than everyone else. What might she do?”

  Again he turned to look out of the booth. Nobody was anywhere close.

  “Six months ago, we had suspicions that Cinnra, on Zathus, was trying to get himself a human killer,” Grodray said. “Not long after that, about two months ago, Cinnra was dead and there was a new boss. One nobody had heard of before. A renegade Vanir, according the very little we’ve been able to piece together.”

  “A modified human?” she gasped.

  Grodray shrugged meaningfully.

  “And somebody in the gang went and got themselves a cop, to try and stop this Maximus?” Eveth leapt into the darkness. “But they’ll need to upgrade him to a Vanir as well. Will they stop?”

  “That’s why we’re functionally acting like Prime Investigators on this, Eve,” her partner said, deadly serious. “Go wherever the crime takes us, without being Prime Investigators, because that might attract attention.”

  “Are you really just a Senior Constable, Jackeith Grodray?” she asked, making another intuitive leap.

  Another grin. But not a no. Or a yes.

  “Then we’re back to the top,” she said. “I don’t think we have time to do anything but kick over an anthill and see what happens. If Maximus is really a disguised human, and Gareth is about to become a Vanir, we’re potentially facing a war among literal gods, right here on our beat. You need to find me a door I can kick in.”

  His eyes got a faraway look to them, like he was checking files for the right address. Someone that wasn’t normally worth rousting, or maybe a criminal he knew about, because those were easier to keep track of.

  Instead of answering, he pulled out his pocketcomm and dialed.

  “Yeah, me,” he said to whoever answered.

  Pause.

  “I want a name,” Grodray said. “Someone at mid-level that is wired in enough to give me the information I want when my crazy partner has him dangling out a window by one ankle.”

  Longer pause. Probably some hemming and hawing at the other end. Like maybe she already had that sort of reputation on Orgoth Vortai and someone might know that.

  She had never actually let go. But it made a fantastic threat, when a woman who was bigger than you could hold you by one leg, upside down, over a thirty-foot-drop.

  “And remember, you’re the one signing this check,” Grodray added his own threat when he got an answer.

  If whoever it was wasn’t on the level, Jackeith Grodray might be coming for them next. With an angry partner in tow.

  Food arrived as he hung up, so he sat silently, but she could see that twinkle in his eyes again.

  When they were alone, and he checked, the man smiled like a shark spying a wounded seal.

  “I might have someone for you, Eve,” he said.

  Good.

  She had to stop two gods from destroying the Accord of Souls. And she absolutely had to do it tonight.

  Awakening

  Gareth was back in the dentist chair. The walls were brown, so he knew he hadn’t fallen into a nightmarish dream, reliving those few days in the other chair, being slowly eaten by the psionic drill.

  Talyarkinash was in the other room, tuning things as well as she could.

  She had gone as far as her extensive experience and creativity could take her, she had told him. And he believed her, having watched quietly all day as the woman alternatively calculated and cursed under her breath.

  They both felt the pressure coming to a head. Angry people out there were looking for their scalps, and he had only one option to protect this woman who had come to trust a human.

  “Gareth, are you ready?” she said over the intercom.

  “I am,” he said, taking a deep breath.

  “Stand by.”

  The chair grabbed him in iron bands. Wrists, shins, chest, head. He was back in that technological iron maiden, waiting for the mad scientist to press the door shut on him.

  “I wish I could say otherwise, but this is going to hurt,” she offered an early apology. “Normally, we would space the six injections out over as many days, with stops to monitor your medical condition and feed you a proper, balanced diet. But as you know, they could kick in the door at any moment.”

  Lunch had been everything left over from dinner, plus a can of pasta and some canned fruit, until he felt like he would explode if he took another bite.

  “I understand, Talyarkinash,” he replied. “Thank you for doing this my way. I can handle pain. I am Earth Force Sky Patrol. There is no other choice. And if it fails, keep notes so you can fix it for the next agent you recruit, because we both know nobody in the Accord can stop him.”

  “I will, Gareth,” she said quietly. “And thank you for last night. I really needed a friend.”

  Gareth started to say something. Started to blush. But she must have hit the button as she spoke, because something tapped him on the left shoulder, the one closer to the heart, and suddenly his entire body was on fire.

  He might have screamed. Wanted to. Told his lungs and throat to carry through, but his body was no longer his to command.

  Instead, Gareth was composed of a roaring fire that someone else was trying to extinguish with acid. Every nerve. Every muscle. Every neuron.

  Gareth cou
ld never remember experiencing a tenth, even a hundredth as much pain. Diving across death pressure without a helmet, in order to save the ship from detonation, hadn’t hurt as much.

  His eyes were on fire now, or perhaps his optic nerves were slowly being eaten by miniature piranha, one angry bite at a time.

  After an eternity measured in the lifetime of stars, the pain seemed to ebb.

  Gareth found he could think again. His throat was raw, but that might have been the screaming he was hoping he was able to do. His arms and legs felt like wet spaghetti sliding off a plate.

  “Gareth?” the Angel of Death called his name. “Can you hear me?”

  No, not the Angel of Death. Retribution, perhaps.

  That would make her Nemesis, the bringer of retribution. Except that was his job.

  The helmet retracted and Gareth found that he could see again.

  He looked up and saw Talyarkinash’s azure eyes staring down at him with concern.

  Yes, he had become Nemesis. That would in turn make her the goddess of night, Nyx.

  He rather enjoyed that thought.

  “Are you okay?” she seemed to be asking.

  Gareth nodded and grunted, not quite willing to trust his tongue right now.

  “Good,” she continued. “Because somebody just kicked in the door to my apartment, across the hallway. We’ve run out of time.”

  Closing The Trap

  “We’ve got them,” she said as Marc let Maiair into the other chamber.

  Yooyar was with her, and both had their headcrests at full display. Marc was pretty sure what that signified among the Warreth, but now was really not the time.

  “Where?” he asked. “And are you sure?”

  There had been a couple of false alarms so far today. Those two Constables were getting progressively less communicative with the local cops, which suggested that they had finally figured out what was wrong. Probably, they were on the verge of cleaning up the local police and Constabulary, which would seriously dent his operations on this planet, but that was a problem for tomorrow.

  Today, he needed to kill Gareth Dankworth. After that, he had time to put longer-term plans into action.

  “We leaned extra heavy on someone who should have told us sooner,” Yooyar said with the sort of grim tone that suggested she just might be capable of killing in cold blood, which made her a rarity in the Accord of Souls. If she could do that, he would have as much work for the young Warreth as she wanted to undertake. “When we threatened to hand him over to the cops, he gave us an address. Supposedly, around two years ago Liamssen hired him to build her a secret lab not far from the university campus.”

  “Good,” Marc exclaimed. “If it really is the place, then we’ll turn him over to the Constables later for holding out on us now. If not, I want you to kill him. I’m done playing around and the stakes are too high right now.”

  “Who do we take with us?” Maiair asked the million-credit-question.

  Who did he trust, when he was about to take on a human? Maiair had been right. Most of the team he brought to Hurquar were only really dangerous to their own kind, those inside the Accord of Souls.

  What he really needed were killers. Men he had used back on Earth.

  This group would have to do.

  “Get me a driver who knows his stuff,” Marc commanded. “You two, plus Zorge. Bring stunners only, as I may need to torture information out of the four of them later, and I want them all alive for now.”

  Yooyar nodded and departed. Maiair waited an extra second, as if about to say something, before she nodded and departed as well.

  The way the women had reacted to the word torture just exacerbated the difference between the human, ruling caste he would need to build later, and the pitiful pacifists that had inherited the galaxy from those people who really should have done something about humans fifty thousand years ago.

  That, or they needed to come back now and set it to right.

  The failure of the Chaa to stop him was evidence enough to Marc that he was indeed destined to live forever and rule the galaxy as a newly-born god.

  Ant Hills

  Eveth had taken the time to change before they set out. She was back in the blue-gray bodysuit, covered over with armored scales and sporting a holster for her pistol on her left thigh. The blue ring over her heart seemed to be filling her with white-hot plasma from the surface of a star. Grodray had changed too, but he had gone the full route, including the white, dress beret and tunic over the top of his armor, so that made him look like the good cop.

  That was okay. Eveth was angry enough already. And Grodray had said they were acting as Prime Inspectors on this case. That meant she had a great deal more leeway on rules and regulations than a mere Constable.

  Time to put that to the test.

  The auto-taxi had dropped them on a side street not far from the main tourist area, down by the river. They had eaten lunch not a mile from here, but by night it was an entirely different world.

  Neon signs competed for attention Music pulsed a low, rumbling bass she could feel in her sternum, even from here. There was a line of people at the door, waiting for one of the bouncers protecting the joint to let them in, assuming they passed the requisite coolness test inherent in clubs like this.

  “That’s it?” she asked, nodding the direction of the target as they came around the corner. The music hit her like a wet towel.

  Grodray just nodded.

  “What exactly are you planning to do, Eve?” he asked in a simple voice, falling into stride with her as she moved.

  “Kick over an anthill, Jack,” she smiled back, almost biting her lip with anticipation.

  No more deduction. No more intuitive leaps into the darkness. Just heads that needed cracking together.

  She approached the line and went around the rope holding the unwelcome at bay.

  Two of the bouncers in black shirts at the front door were Nari. Big specimens of determination that probably intimidated the hell out of tourists and artists. The one in the middle was a Vanir. He was maybe Grodray’s height, and had lots of mass, but much of it was turning into a pot belly around the middle.

  Eveth flashed her badge as she got close and slipped it into her thigh holder so it was out of the way and her hands were clear.

  “You can’t go in there,” the fat guy said. “It’s a private party.”

  “Stop me then,” Eveth said.

  Apparently, they bred them dumb on Hurquar, or wherever this guy was from. He actually reached out and tried to grab Eveth’s shoulder as she walked by him.

  It had been a day. A whole week of days like this.

  Eveth grabbed the hand on her right shoulder with her own right hand. She twisted it forward hard as she kept walking, forcing him sideways and down if he didn’t want his arm broken.

  One of the two Nari looked like he might want to cause trouble, until a stun pistol appeared in his face, at the other end of a long, Vanir arm belonging to her angry partner.

  “Official business,” he said, invoking the kinds of dread-bringing words that would get the other two thrown in jail for weeks until Grodray or Eveth decided they had suffered enough embarrassment.

  Interfering with a Constabulary investigation was a felony everywhere, just for situations like this.

  Both Nari turned white around the eyes. Ears went flat against skulls and the two men backed away.

  Eveth would have expected to see tails tucked under, if they weren’t wearing baggy pants.

  She turned her attention to the big guy, still trying not to have a broken arm. He had a look about him of a bully boy. Just the kind of guy you wanted at the front door of a club like this. She twisted a little more, and he was on his knees.

  Eveth pulled her spare handcuffs from a belt pouch and hooked this bastard to the door handle. The only way he was going anywhere without her now involved a cutting laser, patience, and a high pain threshold.

  Grodray nodded his approval.

>   Inside, the wall of sound was almost a painful experience. Eveth wondered what subsonics might be bathing the crowd in emotional manipulation, but it wasn’t her problem.

  She looked to the right, and saw a crowd pressed up against a long bar like a rising tide. On the left, tables filled with sweaty patrons. In the middle, a dance floor and a light show so bright it might constitute an optical assault.

  The door she wanted was on the far side, back on the left, near where risers went up to tables in the back with a good view.

  Two more goons protected it as she wended her way through the mob, not exactly elbowing folks out of her way, but taking full advantage of the smaller species around her, who couldn’t resist her angry mass.

  Another Nari guarded this door, with a Grace on the other side. Both wore the same black shirt of security employees, and had noted her approach with concern bordering on hostility.

  Eveth smiled as she got close enough for the men to move to block the door. With one hand, she flipped open the wallet with the badge. With the other, she drew her pistol and pointed it at the one on the left. Grodray’s pistol was there a split-second later, like he had known how this was going down.

  Maybe he secretly was a Prime Investigator, hiding out with the little people?

  “Your choice,” Eveth yelled over the music.

  The Grace nodded and backed down first, sliding across from the doorway and more or less pushing the Nari against the wall and whispering something in his ear as he did.

  Like what a really bad idea it might be to resist the angry, giant woman with a badge and a gun.

  Through the door the sound fell to a dull echo in the middle distance. The walls were rough wood covered over with old concert playbills, and the floor badly scuffed tile. Eveth passed a kitchen that extended behind the wall on the bar side, and then a blank space that was probably the back of the restrooms.

  The hallway ended in a wooden door, older than the hills, and with a name on it in gold letters. The name Grodray had gotten for her earlier.