Starbase Human

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  She stepped into the decontamination chamber, half expecting the warm light to find something had attached itself to her. But she was cleared within the standard sixty seconds. She stepped outside, into the reception area, and the lights came up, just like they were supposed to.

  The reception area lights were supposed to stay up for at least twenty minutes after the last person departed.

  So, not only had no one been waiting for her, no one had been in the area prior to her arrival.

  She couldn’t take the silence anymore.

  Lashante? she sent. Where is everyone?

  Come to the mess, Simiaar sent back. She did not use a visual or even sound, which was odd. Because Simiaar preferred the human touch, or so she claimed.

  Gomez left the reception area and stopped in the cargo bay. A tiny armory hid in a small closet there, known only to her, Simiaar, and the pilot. No one else needed to know that extra weapons existed on this level.

  Gomez grabbed a laser pistol, checked to see if it was charged (it was), and then carried it with her to the stairs between levels.

  The mess was one deck up. They didn’t use it much—or rather, Apaza, Simiaar, and Gomez didn’t use it. The small crew did. Which made the gathering even stranger than it had initially seemed.

  The mess was directly across from the stairs, taking up a good half of the deck. The smells of coffee and the last meal cooked—whatever it had been—filled the corridor. As she crossed, she smelled eggs, toast, and a bit of soy sauce.

  Breakfast.

  Her stomach growled. For her, breakfast had been a long time ago. Hétique City did not operate on Earth Standard time.

  Gomez slipped into the mess. Most of the crew stood inside, staring at the far wall. Coffee still sat in pots along the counters, as well as donuts and some cold dim sum. Eggs had congealed in serving trays.

  Gomez grabbed a donut and scanned for Simiaar. She didn’t see her immediately. Instead, her gaze found Apaza, who clutched his personal, gigantic coffee thermos as if it were a lifeline.

  Gomez started; she hadn’t expected to see him outside of the information room. He was even more pear-shaped than he had been when he started on this mission, and she worried, ever so remotely, about his health.

  Apaza shifted slightly, and Gomez saw Simiaar at his side. Simiaar was watching the screens, as well.

  Gomez threaded her way through the crew. Normally, they would have nodded at her or said hello or welcome back. She would have greeted them, as well.

  Instead, they were focused on the screen, too.

  Gomez looked up, saw some flying cars passing over buildings, and Peyti everywhere, with their masks off and clutched in their long fingers. She knew if she scrolled through her links she could find sound, but she didn’t.

  Instead, she stopped beside Simiaar.

  “What the hell is going on?” Gomez demanded.

  “They tried again,” Simiaar said softly.

  “Who tried again?”

  “God, if we knew who, we could stop this, couldn’t we?” Simiaar snapped, which was wholly unlike her.

  “Back me up here, I’ve been traveling,” Gomez said.

  Apaza glanced at her, his face lined with worry. “Someone attacked the Moon again, only this time, the word is they might have used Peyti clones.”

  Gomez cursed softly, heart pounding. “Is anything left?”

  “They seemed to have caught it in time,” someone said from behind her.

  “The Peyti were using bombs built into their masks, and the bombs didn’t work if the environment got changed from Earth Normal to Peyti Normal. Some kind of failsafe.” Apaza clutched his coffee thermos even tighter. “But anyone with those Peyti when the environment changed from Earth Normal to Peyti Normal died.”

  “They have no idea what the body count is yet,” Simiaar said softly. She looked over at Gomez. “Did we miss this?”

  Gomez was staring at the screens. The images made no sense to her. Various Peyti faces, buildings she didn’t recognize, people standing near sectioned domes.

  She was startled. She hadn’t expected the Peyti.

  The Peyti, who considered violence a last resort. The Peyti, who always questioned any addition to the Alliance if the addition had a culture based on violence.

  Her brain was having trouble processing this.

  “The commentators I’m listening to are reeling,” Apaza said. “They all thought the first attack was blowback against some human policies, and now this with the Peyti, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Peyti clones,” Gomez repeated. “The cloning facilities generally don’t mix clone types.”

  “What does that mean?” Camilla, the secondary pilot, asked.

  “It means that the businesses are human-only or Peyti-only,” answered Jiang, the third pilot. That meant Charlie was alone in the cockpit.

  Gomez wondered if that was a good idea.

  “Uzven knew, didn’t it?” Simiaar asked Gomez. “The bastard just didn’t tell us.”

  Gomez looked at her. Uzven, the Peyti translator who had screwed them up so badly on Epriccom more than fifteen years ago.

  “Uzven trains the Peyti in human customs,” Simiaar said, practically spitting the words. “I bet it trained these clones.”

  Gomez wasn’t so certain. But Uzven had been a problem from the moment she met it. It would be so easy to believe Uzven had something to do with this. But Uzven might simply have been a cranky, difficult Peyti. She’d met dozens of those. They always believed they were superior to humans—and in some ways, they were.

  Gomez shook her head. “We don’t know anything yet, Lashante.”

  “This is a nightmare,” Simiaar said. “I can’t imagine what those poor people are going through.”

  Neither could Gomez. But one thing was clear. These attacks were focused on the Moon itself, for whatever reason.

  That piece of information was probably important.

  The fact that these attackers had used clones as weapons again was important as well, although she wasn’t quite sure how that factored in.

  And with more people dead in yet another attack, the investigators on the Moon would be tied up with another emergency.

  She turned away from the screens and looked at her small crew.

  “We’re heading to the Moon as fast as we can,” she said. “Obviously, it’s one of the most dangerous places in the Alliance at the moment, and I won’t look askance at any of you if you want to leave. There are human cities here on Hétique. I’m sure you can find your way home if you don’t want to travel with us.”

  What the hell are you doing? Simiaar sent. If they don’t believe in us, they might report what we’re doing.

  Gomez didn’t care. And she wasn’t going to handhold Simiaar at the moment.

  The crew was looking at her, faces gray with shock. A few people had tears in their eyes.

  “I’m afraid, however, that you’ll have to make your decision now. We’re leaving Hétique’s orbit in less than an hour. I want to thank you all for your help—”

  “What can we do on the Moon?” asked Floriano, who grew food for the kitchen. “I mean, we have jobs here, but you’re planning to stay once we get on the Moon, right?”

  “I’m not planning anything at the moment,” Gomez said. “Things have obviously changed. And we have a ship. If the Moon government needs us to track things or investigate things, then we might have to travel to do so.”

  “And if we don’t?” Floriano pressed.

  “Then I’m sure there will be plenty for you to do.”

  To Gomez’s surprise, that sentence came from Apaza. He sounded almost angry.

  “Like what?” Floriano asked.

  “Clean-up,” Sionek, who handled the cargo bay, said.

  “Rebuilding,” said Hana, whom Gomez had brought in to handle the weapons systems on the ship.

  “Taking care of the dead,” Simiaar said, and the conversation stopped.

  Everyone l
ooked at her. She shrugged.

  “Think it through,” she said. “They lost millions in the dome collapses. And now they have collateral damage from their attempt to stop this second attack.”

  “What a nightmare,” Floriano murmured.

  Gomez nodded. She glanced back at the Moon images on screen. Yellowish atmosphere swirled around an enclosed room with a single window. A human hand slapped against the window and then slid down, out of view.

  She shuddered.

  Gomez turned back to the crew. She had no idea how many people had just seen that.

  “Let me repeat,” she said. “Anyone who wants to leave, can.”

  Floriano was shaking his head. The rest of the crew stood very still. No one seemed to be bolting for the door.

  “You’re right,” said Hana. “They need a lot of help.”

  “There’re not a lot of us, but at least we’ll be fresh faces,” said Sionek.

  “And we’ll be a little more emotionally stable,” said Jiang.

  “Speak for yourself, my friend,” said Camilla, and everyone laughed, breaking the tension.

  Then, as quickly as the levity appeared, it dissipated.

  “Thank you,” Gomez said, and eased out of the mess. She had a lot to do.

  More clones, but of a different species. More killing. More attempts at destroying the domes.

  And yet, she knew all of this was coming from inside the Alliance.

  She needed to review the material she had gathered and see what she’d missed.

  She had a feeling the pieces were there.

  She just had to put them together.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  NUUYOMA AND VERSTRAETE returned to the restaurant that evening. Verstraete took a table near the entrance. Nuuyoma had reserved the same table he’d had the evening before.

  At first, he thought the snotty maître d’ wouldn’t give him the table. But after a bit of arguing, she relented.

  The restaurant was full. People—humans—sat in tight groups of three and four, having intense conversations. As the maître d’ took Nuuyoma to his table, he noted again how strange it was to see a human-only restaurant. It made him uncomfortable on a very deep level, as if he were heading into a dark place.

  Conversely, he loved the smells of Earth-based spices and herbs. Cinnamon and nutmeg, garlic and ginger, pepper and more pepper. The scent of baked bread combined with the smell of cooked fish. All of those smells would have to be isolated in some restaurants with mixed clientele since the scent of some of the human spices could kill certain aliens. Most mixed restaurants opted for some kind of manufactured “cooking” smell that had been designed to appeal to all customers (and probably appealed to none).

  The maître d’ sniffed as she pulled back his chair and made a production of handing him the bound menu. Everything about this place was an affectation. The bound menu—on this level, at least—had a screen inside. He was told that the upper floors had actual paper menus, which were not just expensive, but wasteful.

  Nuuyoma scanned, even though he knew he was going to order ogbono soup with fufu. He hadn’t had a chance to finish yesterday’s order. This time, it didn’t matter what One Of One Direct said to him; he would finish the meal.

  He had ordered a pineapple lime drink, no alcohol, and received it—with a bit of fresh pineapple attached to a stir stick—by the time One Of One Direct appeared.

  One Of One Direct limped, which Nuuyoma hadn’t noticed before. His skin tone seemed even paler than it had the day before.

  One Of One Direct glanced at Verstraete, then sat down heavily across from Nuuyoma. “Have you ordered?”

  “I’m waiting for you,” Nuuyoma said.

  One Of One Direct reached out a hand and grabbed the nearest passing waiter, nearly making her stumble into a table of diners.

  “I’m having rigatoni with meat sauce,” One Of One Direct said. “Real meat. From an animal source. Got that?”

  “That’s all we serve, sir,” the waiter said.

  “Yeah, sure,” One Of One Direct said. “And my friend here will have…?”

  “Ogbono soup with fufu,” Nuuyoma said, hoping the waiter didn’t take the word “friend” seriously.

  “They have four hundred items on the menu,” One Of One Direct said, “and you order the same thing twice?”

  Nuuyoma shrugged. “I know what I like.”

  “Hmmm,” One Of One Direct said. Then he looked at the waiter. “I want whatever he’s drinking, as soon as you can get it to me.”

  “Yes, sir,” the waiter said, sounding sullen. It amazed Nuuyoma that One Of One Direct could make anyone sullen within such a short interaction.

  One Of One Direct let go of the waiter’s arm.

  “You don’t like me, do you?” One Of One Direct said to Nuuyoma.

  “I don’t know you,” Nuuyoma said.

  “You’re predisposed to hate me,” One Of One Direct said.

  “You’re trying to pick a fight,” Nuuyoma said. “Why is that?”

  One Of One Direct sighed, then glanced at Verstraete. “I suppose you don’t have any information for me.”

  “Actually, I do,” Nuuyoma said.

  One Of One Direct swung his head back toward Nuuyoma so fast that the table wobbled. Clearly, One Of One Direct was surprised.

  “You probably know some of this,” Nuuyoma said, “and I don’t think you know the rest of it.”

  “Did you bring me documentation?” One Of One Direct sounded a bit too eager.

  “On some of it,” Nuuyoma said. “Some of it is eyes-only for Alliance Security employees.”

  One Of One Direct let out a small snort, as if that were expected. “Okay, tell me.”

  “I’ll start with the information that I think you already know. If you’re satisfied with it,” Nuuyoma said, “then you tell me some of the information you’d mentioned. If I’m satisfied with that, I’ll tell you more of what I know. And you’ll tell me some things.”

  One Of One Direct’s eyes narrowed. He clearly didn’t like Nuuyoma taking over the conversation. Still, One Of One Direct didn’t argue.

  “All right,” he said.

  The waiter set down One Of One Direct’s drink. Nuuyoma waited until she’d walked away before he began. As he did, his gaze brushed across Verstraete. She was watching closely. She almost looked nervous.

  “We discovered that you were right,” Nuuyoma said. “It appears Takara Hamasaki survived the explosions on Starbase Human. Her ship broke down just on the edge of the Frontier, and she abandoned it.”

  “There’s no guarantee that she was the one who abandoned it.” One Of One Direct’s voice thrummed with frustration. That alone told Nuuyoma that One Of One Direct had found the ship information, but had been unable to go farther.

  “That’s correct,” Nuuyoma said. “But she did. And before I tell you how I know that, you get to share with me.”

  One Of One Direct leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs. He kept one finger on the table, as if that helped him remain centered. He studied Nuuyoma for a moment.

  Nuuyoma got the sense that One Of One Direct hadn’t quite expected to be in this position, that he had expected to get some confirmation from Nuuyoma and then leave without saying anything.

  Nuuyoma waited. He could wait all night if need be.

  The waiter came back with his ogbono soup. It smelled fantastic. He tried not to think about One Of One Direct’s comment about “real” meat. Nuuyoma had no idea what else tasted like goat besides goat. So he was going to assume that was the meat in the soup.

  He rolled some fufu between his fingers and dipped it in the soup. One Of One Direct watched him. Nuuyoma would happily finish this meal, even if One Of One Direct never spoke to him again.

  One Of One Direct sighed. “I was created by a conglomerate that you would consider criminal. It was called Cloni.”

  “Was?” Nuuyoma asked.

  “Ah,” One Of One Direct said. “We trade
information back and forth.”

  “That’s a name you could have made up,” Nuuyoma said.

  “But I did not.”

  “At least tell me where it was based,” Nuuyoma said.

  “Not far from here. On LeirSky.”

  “Where’s LeirSky?” Nuuyoma asked. He had familiarized himself with the planets and moons around Starbase Human. He hadn’t heard of LeirSky.

  “It is an industrial base that orbits the planet Leir,” One Of One Direct said. “It’s huge, and has many industries like cloning—although Cloni is no longer there.”

  So the information was easy to give out, and had little consequence. It was as if they were playing a game, and they were starting with their least valuable cards.

  “You can check this information,” One Of One Direct said.

  “I am,” Nuuyoma said, and then sent the name of Cloni and the industrial base LeirSky to Verstraete to confirm.

  “Your woman cannot join us,” One Of One Direct said, as if he knew what Nuuyoma was doing. Of course he knew. He would probably do the same thing under the same circumstances.

  “I know,” Nuuyoma said, “but she can research for me while you and I talk.”

  Nuuyoma did not correct the phrase “your woman.” He knew that One Of One Direct was trying to irritate him.

  One Of One Direct snorted again, then shook his head. The waiter returned, this time carrying a plate of noodles covered in steaming red sauce. She set the plate down so quickly that Nuuyoma thought she almost dropped it on One Of One Direct.

  The scent of tomatoes, oregano, and garlic wafted across the table.

  Yes, Verstraete sent. Cloni was a cloning conglomerate known for designer criminal clones. It made millions, maybe billions, thirty years ago before it was bought out and moved.

  “Has she confirmed?” One Of One Direct asked.

  Apparently Nuuyoma was letting himself get a bit glazed as he got information through his links. He needed to retrain himself so that he didn’t do that.

  Nuuyoma dipped more fufu into the soup. He ate the piece slowly, reveling in the spice and texture. Then he wiped his fingers on the nearby napkin.

  “I found no record of Takara Hamasaki after the explosion of the first Starbase Human,” he said.