Starbase Human

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  And then she signed off.

  She couldn’t do anything she had just threatened Jarvis with. The food thing hadn’t risen to the level where she could charge Faulke, and that was if she could prove that he had put the bodies into the crates himself. He had an android guard, which the chief of police had had to approve—those things weren’t supposed to operate inside the city—and that guard had probably done all the dirty work. The Earth Alliance would just claim malfunction, and Faulke would be off the hook.

  Jarvis fritzed back in, fainter now. The image had moved one meter sideways, which meant he was superimposed over one of her office chairs. The chair cut through him at his knees and waist. Obviously, he had no idea where his image had appeared, and she wasn’t about to tell him or move the image.

  “Okay, okay,” Jarvis said. “I’ve managed to make this link as secure as I possibly can, given my location. Guarantee that your side is secure.”

  Gumiela shrugged. “I’m alone in my office, in the Armstrong Police Department. Good enough for you?”

  She didn’t tell him that she was recording this whole thing. She was tired of being used by this asshole.

  “I guess it’ll have to be. Yes, Faulke is running the clones that we have embedded with major criminal organizations on the Moon.”

  “If the clones malfunction—” She chose that word carefully “—what’s he supposed to do?”

  “Depends on how specific the clone is to the job, and how important it is to the operation,” he said. “Generally, Faulke’s supposed to ship the clone back. That’s why Armstrong PD approved android guards for his office.”

  “There aren’t guards,” she said. “There’s only one.”

  Jarvis’s image came in a bit stronger. “What?”

  “Just one,” she said, “and that’s not all. I don’t think your friend Faulke has sent any clones back.”

  “I can check,” Jarvis said.

  “I don’t care what you do for your records. According to ours—” and there she was lying again “—he’s been killing the clones that don’t work out and putting them in composting crates. Those crates go to the Growing Pits, which grow fresh food for the city.”

  “He what?” Jarvis asked.

  “And to make matters worse, he’s using a hardening poison to kill them, a poison our coroner fears might leach into our food supply. We’re checking on that now. Although it doesn’t matter. The intent is what matters, and clearly your man Faulke has lost his mind.”

  Jarvis cursed. “You’re not making this up.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I’m not making this up,” she said. “I want him and his little android friend out of here within the hour, or I’m arresting him, and I’m putting him on trial. Public trial.”

  “Do you realize how many operations you’ll ruin?”

  “No,” she said, “and I don’t care. Get him out of my city. It’s only a matter of time before your crazy little operative starts killing legal humans, not just cloned ones. And I don’t want him doing it here.”

  Jarvis cursed again. “Can I get your help—”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want anyone at the police department involved with your operation. And if you go to the chief, I’ll tell her that you have thwarted my attempts to arrest a man who threatens the entire dome. Because, honestly, Ike baby, this is a courtesy contact. I don’t have to do you any favors at all, especially considering what kind of person you installed in my city. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, Andrea, I do,” Jarvis said, looking serious.

  Andrea. So he had heard her all those times. And he had ignored her, the bastard. She made note of that too.

  “One hour,” she said, and signed off.

  Then she wiped her hands on her skirt. They were shaking just a little. Screw him, the weasely bastard. She’d send someone to that office now, to escort Jarvis’s horrid operative out of Armstrong.

  She wanted to make sure that asshole left quickly, and didn’t double back.

  She wanted this problem out of her city, off her Moon, and as far from her notice as possible.

  And that, she knew, was the best she could do without upsetting the department’s special relationship with the Alliance.

  She hoped her best would be good enough.

  TWENTY-TWO

  KOOS LED THE raid up the back stairs, into the narrow hallway that smelled faintly of dry plastic, his best team members behind him. They fanned out in the narrow hallway, the two women first, signaling that the hallway was clear. Koos and Hala, the only other man on this part of the team, skirted past them and through the open door of Faulke’s office.

  It was much smaller than Koos expected. Faulke was only three meters from him. Faulke was scrawny, narrow-shouldered, the kind of man easily ignored on the street.

  He reached behind his back—probably for a weapon—as Koos and Hala held their laser rifles on him.

  “Don’t even try,” Koos said. “I have no compunction shooting you.”

  Faulke’s eyes glazed for a half second—probably letting his android guard know he was in trouble—then an expression of panic flitted across his face before he managed to control it.

  The other members of Koos’s team had already disabled the guard.

  “Who are you?” Faulke asked.

  Koos ignored him, and spoke to his team. “I want him bound. And make sure you disable his links.”

  One of the women slipped in around Koos and put light cuffs around Faulke’s wrists and pasted a small rectangle of Silent-Seal over his mouth.

  You can’t get away with this, Faulke sent on public links. You have no idea who I am—

  And then his links shut off.

  Koos grinned. “You’re Cade Faulke. You work for Earth Alliance Intelligence. You’ve been running clones that you embed into businesses. Am I missing anything?”

  Faulke’s eyes didn’t change, but he swallowed hard.

  “Let’s get him out of here,” Koos said.

  They encircled him, in case the other tenants on the floor decided to see what all the fuss was about.

  But no one opened any doors. The neighborhood was too dicey for that. If anyone had an ounce of civic feeling, they would have gone out front to stop the fight that Koos had staged below, and no one had.

  He took Faulke’s arm, surprised at how flabby it was. Hardly any muscles at all.

  No wonder the asshole had used poison. He wasn’t strong enough to subdue any living creature on his own.

  “You’re going to love what we have planned for you,” Koos said as he dragged Faulke down the stairs. “By the end of it all, you and I will be old friends.”

  This time Faulke gave him a startled look.

  Koos grinned at him and led him to the waiting aircar that would take them to the port.

  It would be a long time before anyone heard from Cade Faulke again.

  If they ever did.

  TWENTY-THREE

  DESHIN ARRIVED HOME, exhausted and more than a little unsettled. The house smelled of baby powder and coffee. He hadn’t really checked to see how the rest of Gerda’s day alone with Paavo had gone.

  He felt guilty about that.

  He went through the modest living room to the baby’s room. He and Gerda didn’t flash their wealth around Armstrong, preferring to live quietly. But he had so much security in the home that he was still startled the clone had broken through it.

  Gerda was sitting in a rocking chair near the window, Paavo in her arms. She put a finger to her lips, but it did no good.

  His five-month-old son twisted, and looked at Deshin with such aware eyes that it humbled him. Deshin knew that this baby was twenty times smarter than he would ever be. It worried him, and it pleased him as well.

  Paavo smiled and extended his pudgy arms. Deshin picked him up. The boy was heavier than he had been just a week before. He also needed a diaper change.

  Deshin took him to the changing table and started, kno
wing just from the look on her face that Gerda was exhausted, too.

  “Long day?” he asked.

  “Good day,” she said. “We made the right decision.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We did.”

  He had decided on the way home not to tell her everything. He would wait until the interrogations of Cade Faulke and the five clones were over. Koos had taken all six of them out of Armstrong in the same ship.

  And the interrogations wouldn’t even start until Koos got them out of Earth Alliance territory, days from now.

  Deshin had no idea what would happen to Faulke or the clones after that. Deshin was leaving that up to Koos. Koos no longer headed security for Deshin Enterprises in Armstrong, but he had served Deshin well today. He would handle some of the company’s work off Moon.

  Not a perfect day’s work, not even the day’s work Deshin had expected, but a good one, nonetheless. He probably had other leaks to plug in his organization, but at least he knew what they were now.

  His baby raised a chubby fist at Deshin as if agreeing that action needed to be taken. Deshin bent over and blew bubbles on Paavo’s tummy, something that always made Paavo giggle.

  He giggled now, a sound so infectious that Deshin wondered how he had lived without it all his life.

  He would do everything he could to protect this baby, everything he could to take care of his family.

  “He trusts you,” Gerda said with a tiny bit of amazement in her voice.

  Most people never trusted Deshin. Gerda did, but Gerda was special.

  Deshin blew bubbles on Paavo’s tummy again, and Paavo laughed.

  His boy did trust him.

  He picked up his newly diapered son, and cradled him in his arms. Then he kissed Gerda.

  The three of them, forever.

  That was what he needed, and that was what he had ensured today.

  The detective could poke around his business all she wanted, but she would never know the one thing that calmed Deshin down.

  Justice had been done.

  His family was safe.

  And that was all that mattered.

  JUST BEFORE THE PEYTI CRISIS

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ACTING MARSHAL IN CHARGE Elián Nuuyoma stared at the coordinates displayed on the screens before him. Then he looked out the windows of the observation deck on the EAFS Stanley.

  Nothing except stars, off in the distance.

  He should have expected it. He had expected it.

  Intellectually, he had known that the starbase known as Strangers’ Paradise, Starbase Human, and Danger Zone, depending on which star map he consulted, had been destroyed over thirty-five years ago, but part of him hadn’t believed it.

  Part of him was still incredibly naïve. He had hoped that something that remained on the Alliance’s star maps would still exist, maybe rebuilt after the massive explosions he had seen in a grainy old vid nearly six months ago.

  He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He could see himself, reflected in the windows, the soft light behind him obscuring the childhood scarification on his face from religious rituals that his parents practiced. He could have repaired those scars, but he didn’t. The scars scared some aliens he came across—and a few humans, as well.

  He liked having a slightly scary appearance. It made up for his tall, reedy build. A friend in school once described him as a man who could hide behind a twig. Nuuyoma was a little thicker now, but not much—certainly not enough to be imposing without the scars.

  He sighed, staring at the unfamiliar stars glowing against the blackness. Usually he loved the observation deck. It housed not just windows on all sides, but also the hydroponics bay. If he moved far enough back, he could feel the warmth of the fake sunlight used for some of the plants.

  He’d been on ships for so long that he actually preferred ship-grown food to food grown planetside. The planetside food had a different flavor, often depending on growing region. Ship-grown food had a consistency he welcomed.

  He liked consistency in shipboard life. Because his day-to-day existence was anything but consistent.

  He had assumed the job of acting marshal on the Stanley when Judita Gomez took a year’s leave, in advance of a probable retirement—or so she told her bosses, mostly so that she could promote Nuuyoma into her position and leave the rest of the staff intact. Otherwise, everyone would have gone through evaluations and been shuffled to other ships. The marshal in charge of the Stanley would have been someone who had downloaded the ship’s history, but hadn’t lived it.

  And, if that were the case, Nuuyoma would have asked for a transfer. He had served on the Stanley since he left the academy. He loved this ship as if she were his own.

  He let out a small sigh. He was treating her as if she were his own as well. The Stanley really didn’t belong out here. The starbase—whatever it was called or had been called—had been at the far edge of the Frontier when the base was destroyed. No Alliance ship had ever docked at it, as far as he could tell.

  Now, it wasn’t quite at the edge of the Frontier, but it was close. It had taken the Stanley five months of travel (with some important stops in between) to get here.

  He had lied to his crew about the reason for the visit: he had said he’d been ordered to investigate the incorrect Alliance maps.

  But he hadn’t been ordered by anyone, not even Gomez. He had done this on his own. In fact, he had told Gomez he was going to do it, and she had tried to talk him out of it.

  Not that she had a chance of doing so. He couldn’t talk her out of investigating the clones who had bombed the Moon on Anniversary Day. She was taking her leave to do that—and she really didn’t plan on retiring after it was all done, although she said that she would.

  Sometimes, he thought she said that because she wasn’t sure if she would have a career when she was done and/or still be alive.

  She suspected—and so did he—that the Alliance was somehow involved in that bombing, and several other things. Which was why she had stepped down.

  Once Nuuyoma had learned what was going on, he wasn’t surprised that she was investigating this. In her shoes, he would have done the same thing.

  She’d let him into the early parts of the investigation, back when she was running the Stanley. Both she and Lashante Simiaar had been shocked by the Anniversary Day bombings—not just because of the destruction, but because of the bombers themselves.

  Apparently, the Stanley had run into a different group of clones from the same source almost sixteen years ago. The clones and the Stanley had had a strange, memorable, and deadly interaction, and three of clones had been shipped into the Alliance.

  Gomez and her team had believed that the Alliance would investigate the clones’ origins and then put a stop to the illegal practices. It was only after Anniversary Day that they discovered no one had ever investigated the clones.

  And after Gomez interviewed one of them herself, all three clones either disappeared or died.

  Nuuyoma had been present for that part, at least. And if he hadn’t been suspicious of the situation before, (he had), he would have been suspicious afterwards.

  Something was definitely off, which he said to Gomez as they had their own argument about his role in the investigation.

  Gomez had told him she didn’t want him to come with her.

  You have a career, Elián. I’m at the end of mine. I have enough money saved to last five lifetimes if I need it. But you, you’re just starting out, and you’re good. You shouldn’t risk your future for my quest.

  He had argued with her. Three others from the Stanley had gone with her—Charlie Zamal, probably the best pilot the Stanley had ever had; Neil Apaza, a researcher whom Nuuyoma had never gotten a sense of; and Lashante Simiaar, the chief forensic examiner, who was absolutely cranky and absolutely brilliant.

  All but Apaza had had long careers. And Apaza was not a good fit for Frontier Security. He had trouble remaining in shape, and Nuuyoma had a sense that Apaza misse
d the Alliance more than he wanted to admit.

  Gomez had taken him, not just because she needed him, but also because he probably would have tested out of the service in the next year or so.

  Nuuyoma wasn’t going to test out. He had always known this would be his career. He loved the first contacts and the strange encounters. And he loved being away from all the familiar things. He loved the way this ship became the real world for everyone on board, and he loved the way that it forged its own future.

  That was why he thought he could get away with this particular investigation. He had told Gomez that.

  No one cares what direction we travel in. I’ll make sure we answer any requests for assistance, but I’ll also head in the direction of the starbase. You don’t have time to go there. It’ll take more than a year to get there and back, especially since you want to go to the middle of the Alliance when you’ve finished. Let me do this job, Judita. Not even the staff will know what’s going on.

  She had studied him for a long time after he said that. He’d worked with her long enough to know that she contemplated while studying people like that.

  Finally, she had nodded.

  He had the sense she didn’t believe there was much to learn out here. The destruction of that starbase looked like a practice run for the destruction on the Moon. The fact that the destruction had come thirty-five years before Anniversary Day made sense; the bad guys, as Gomez had started calling them, needed time to make slow-grow clones and to test them, like they had done on Epriccom.

  Nuuyoma slowly walked around observation deck, sticking to the path along the windows, looking at the area where the starbase had been. The coordinates for the base put the Stanley right on top of the center of the base.

  Unlike historical sites on planets, there was no way to see even a remnant of the destruction and death that had happened here. The emptiness made it look like the Stanley was the first ship to ever come to this part of space.