The Vanished Seas (Major Bhaajan series Book 3)

by Catherine Asaro

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. “I’m good at finding people.”

  Talon spoke tightly. “We are grateful to Majda for offering this aid in our investigation.”

  She didn’t sound grateful, she sounded like she wanted to throw me out the window.

  The bedroom looked like hell: cracked tables, shattered holoscreens, and mirrors in jagged shards on the ground. A filigreed nightstand had broken in two. The scroll lay on the bed, torn and crumpled, but even with that, I recognized its value. I’d grown up in the ancient ruins under the city, a buried world rich with the remnants of past ages, and I’d learned to respect such artifacts. This one didn’t look native to Raylicon. It probably came from the planet Parthonia, the seat of the Imperialate government, which made it even more valuable. I had to admit, Talon had a point. Who in their right mind would destroy that scroll? Mara Quida plus the artifact would bring the kidnappers more wealth than Mara alone.

  Max, I thought. Make a record of all this. Use my eye filters.

  I’m recording in the optical spectrum, he answered. Also infrared and ultraviolet.

  Good.

  A holoscreen on one wall was cycling through views of the room. I blinked, startled. I barely recognized the tall woman it showed, a statuesque figure in a shimmering gold evening gown with a cloud of black curls falling down her back. Yah, that was me. Strange.

  My walk around the room gave Max many views of the wreckage. I paused by Talon. “Can you send me the police reports after their analysts finish their work here?”

  The detective turned her cold stare on me. “Aren’t you making your own recordings?”

  “Yes. But I can’t get the same detail as their experts.” Talon knew that.

  “It’s up to them if they send you their report.” She turned back to her work, ignoring me.

  I gritted my teeth. She knew perfectly well that if I asked for the report, as the Majda rep, she had to send it to me. Let it go, I told myself. I had no interest in getting involved in her turf war.

  Lukas paced the room, restless, never pausing, but he stayed back, respecting our space. He had class, this one. I didn’t want to like him, on principle, because I’d grown up in poverty and these people were all too rich. But I couldn’t help it. He seemed like a decent fellow.

  When he caught me watching him, he came to where I stood with Talon. “What do you think?” He directed his question to us both, letting us figure out whatever hierarchy we were inflicting on each other. Smart. I wouldn’t want to get between me and Talon, either.

  “Your wife clearly fought with her captors,” Talon said.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “But something is off.” I motioned at the mess scattered across the floor. “It doesn’t look like anyone stepped on this debris. Those broken mirror shards are like knives, but none of them show any sign of blood. And it would take more force than two fighters slamming into that nightstand to break it in half.”

  Lukas went very still, hope warring with fear on his face. “You don’t think they fought with Mara?”

  I gave him the truth. “I’d say an explosion blew apart this room.”

  Talon spoke quickly. “I doubt it.” Before I could respond, she walked away.

  Well, screw that. I tamped down my anger. The last thing Lukas needed was to see the investigators on his wife’s case at odds. I even understood why Talon left so abruptly. It wasn’t just to piss on the PI trespassing on her jurisdiction. She didn’t want to tell Lukas his wife could have died. I realized then her rudeness with him came from awkwardness rather than insensitivity. She had no clue what protocol applied to a man with his high rank, and yah, with his beauty, too. He rattled even me, and I’d thought I was immune to that sort of thing. She obviously wasn’t comfortable talking to him without his wife present.

  Lukas spoke quietly to me. “I haven’t received a ransom demand.”

  “That isn’t so unusual,” I said. “She disappeared less than an hour ago. It could be hours before they contact you.”

  His face paled. “And if this was an explosion?”

  I spoke as gently as I could. “We’ve found no trace of blood or any clue that she suffered injuries.” It was the closest I could come to reassuring him.

  Lukas rubbed the heel of his hand over his eyes, smearing away tears. “I just—I don’t understand.” He lowered his arm, watching me as if willing us to make sense out of this nightmare. “We planned so long for tonight. She was so happy! I can’t believe it ended like this.”

  “I’m sorry.” I meant it. “I swear to you, we’ll do everything we can to bring her home.”

  “Thank you, Major.” He went back to pacing.

  I exhaled, fearing I’d raised his hopes too much. This didn’t look good. No, that was too mild a word. It looked like bloody hell. I continued my investigation, not only of the bedroom, but also in the surrounding areas. I stopped on the landing of the curving staircase near the foyer and stood at the rail, studying the foyer below.

  Talon joined me. “The police analysts are here. We’ve also set up monitors in case Del Quida gets a ransom demand.”

  Del Quida. She used a high title of respect for Lukas, only a hair’s breadth below Lord. She had to get me the report, so she wasn’t telling me much, but at least she was trying to be civil. Maybe with Lukas somewhere else, she could relax.

  I touched the crystal sphere at the top of the banister. It was just the right size to rest your hand on as you started down the stairs. “Someone twisted this.”

  Talon peered at the ball. Light from the chandeliers refracted through the crystal, creating a rainbow on the rail. “Looks normal to me.”

  I tapped the stem of the ball. “See that mark? Someone turned the sphere.”

  Talon straightened up. “I doubt it means anything.”

  “Probably not.” It just struck me as odd that in such a perfectly kept mansion, this ornament was out of place.

  Lukas came over to us. “I don’t see any way someone could have broken into the bedroom.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Talon said, gazing at his shoulder.

  His voice cracked. “She has to be all right.”

  Talon finally looked at him. “We’ll do everything we can to find her.”

  Lukas just stared down the staircase. The guests had left, and the robo-servers that cleaned the mansion were waiting patiently for the police analysts to finish their work. Yah, I knew the cleaners were machines, that “patience” didn’t come into it, but they looked that way, robots of all sizes and shapes arrayed in a silent row while human analysts applied yet other machines to study the crime scene.

  Lukas took a deep breath. “I should check on things.”

  “You go on,” Talon told him. “We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

  Lukas nodded and headed downstairs, gripping the railing. He was damn convincing as the distraught spouse. At a gut level, I believed him. I had to think about the rest of it, however, that he and Mara Quida had no children. He was his wife’s sole heir.

  Lukas had a lot to gain if she died.

  The desert night drowsed with a crystalline purity of air. I stood outside the mansion, one of the last people to leave after the gala. A few light globes floated off to the right, above a patio the guests had deserted hours ago. I walked along a path paved with blue stones. Lawns dotted with tiny white flowers lay on either side and the delicate scent of night-blooming jaz filled the air. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the gardens; I just knew too well the other side of that tender beauty. Except for the jaz, everything else growing here came from offworld. Native plants were spiky and tough, better suited for desert survival than making gardens pretty.

  I pulled up the shoulder strap of my dress. The blasted thing kept slipping down my arm. Max, I thought. Have the city transport authority send a flyer. It would be good to get home and take off this outfit.

  Done, Max answered.

  I headed for the curving driveway about a
kilometer from the house, where I could meet the flyer. Silence surrounded me; not only was the Quida mansion on the outskirts of Cries, but sound dampeners also muted the hum of the city.

  I stumbled on a rock in the path and caught myself. Damn heels. Damn dress.

  You wear them well. Max supposedly didn’t have emotions, but his amusement was all too realistic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many men try to pick you up before. Or women.

  I’d never gotten used to the way upper-crust types found me sexy in what one fellow called an “untamed way.” I stopped and pulled off my heels. Holding them in my hand, I continued in bare feet. Max, you need to learn some new idioms. English has some good ones.

  Why ever would I need to learn English idioms?

  This one: Silence is golden. Especially from EIs who find my sex life so amusing.

  I am an EI assistant. I don’t experience amusement. He didn’t sound one whit less amused.

  I stopped, distracted. The silence was too golden here at the mansion. Concentrating, I trying to pick up a sound. Any sound.

  What’s wrong? Max asked.

  Turn up my ear augs. Any good investigator had biomech augmentation, including enhancements to her ears, eyes, skeleton, and musculature. I’d received the basic combat mods when I enlisted, and an upgrade when I transitioned into the officer ranks. It was invaluable in my work, and I kept my system at the top of the game.

  As Max activated my ear mods, sounds intensified, the scrape of leaves against leaves, a breeze whispering over the lawns, and the buzz of pico-ruziks, tiny flying reptiles that lived in the desert but sometimes wandered into city gardens. Normally my enhanced hearing was too intense to use for long, but tonight the gardens still seemed too quiet.

  A faint clink came off to my left.

  I dove into the garden and rolled, my legs tangling in my stupid dress. In that same instant, the lilies next to the path where I’d been standing lit up in the blast of a nail-laser.

  Damn! I jumped to my feet and dropped my shoes. Grabbing my dress, I hiked it up to my hips, holding it with one hand while I sprinted through the garden, my stride stretched out to its full length. I clenched my little gold purse in my other hand, not because I liked little gold purses; I hated the things. But it contained useful stuff.

  Combat mode toggled, Max thought. I’m activating your internal microfusion reactor.

  Somewhere behind me, the garden hissed with a nail shot. I ran harder, doubling my speed. Rocks jabbed my calloused feet. As I dodged back and forth, a lawn at my side flared with another shot.

  Max! With my free hand, I shook my purse open. Have the beetle shorten this damn dress.

  A little green beetle bot zipped out of my purse. It extended its blades and proceeded to cut off the bottom half of my dress while I ran. Its AI managed to keep it from chopping me up, too, despite the way I bounced it around. Within seconds, I was running in a gold shift that fell around my hips in tatters. As I dodged onto a lawn, the dirt next to me hissed with a nail shot.

  I sent a command to the beetle through my link to Max. Find out who is shooting at me.

  The beetle whisked away into the night.

  A public flyer is waiting for you on the driveway, Max thought.

  Why hasn’t security kicked in? The city monitors should have whapped the shooter.

  Someone must have deactivated security.

  No shit. To block city security required a clearance higher than anyone in this investigation could claim—except for Colonel Lavinda Majda.

  I ran out into the sweeping curve of the driveway. A silver flyer waited there. As I sprinted for it, darting back and forth, a nail shot exploded the ground. The hatch of the flyer snapped open and I threw myself inside.

  “Get us out of here!” I yelled.

  With my enhanced speed, it looked as if the pilot was moving in slow motion. To her credit, she took off without hesitation, the craft leaping into the air as the hatch snapped shut. I slid across the deck and plowed into a passenger seat.

  Within moments we were above the city. As I pushed up on my hands and knees, the pilot looked back at me. “You pay now,” she said. “And you give me your clearance.”

  Combat mode off, Max thought.

  My sense of speed returned to normal. “Clearance for what?” I climbed into the passenger seat, doing my best to project a calm, civilized appearance. I doubted it worked, with my hair in a wild mess, my dress in tatters, and my breath coming in gasps.

  “Hell if I know.” The pilot turned back to her controls. “You give me a reason why I should help a raggedy-assed woman running out of a mansion with people shooting at her.”

  “Look at your screen.” Max would have already sent my ID, to pay for the transport.

  A ping came from the cockpit. “Well, shit,” the pilot said. “Majda.”

  As uncomfortable as I felt within the Majda realm of influence, I couldn’t deny that being on their payroll had advantages. “Take me to the city outskirts.” I gave her coordinates for the entrance to the Concourse, a great underground boulevard in the desert beyond the City of Cries. The Concourse was supposedly part of the Undercity, the ancient ruins that lay beneath the desert, but in reality it just served as a glitzy source of revenue for Cries. The true Undercity where I’d grown up existed far below the gleaming Concourse.

  While the pilot brought the flyer around in a long arc, I pondered the Majdas. They had sent me to the gala and called me in on the investigation when Mara Quida disappeared. They were also the only ones who could have deactivated the city security monitors. Coincidence? I doubted it. I needed to find out what was up.

  My life could depend on the answer.

  I strode onto the main floor of the Black Mark casino. No one blinked at my ripped gold scrap of a dress. I fit right in. Holographic roulette wheels spun in the air above the tables, glowing in neon colors while patrons bet and lost. Other gamblers sat around tables in chairs with diamond accents. Dealers who were far too beautiful dealt them cards, cubes, spheres, disks, rods, or whatever game pieces the players wanted. The games were all holographic, run by the house. I mean seriously, who would bet on games of chance controlled by a house mesh system? It always beat you, unless it calculated it needed to let you win a few times to keep you coming back. In the end, you lost, lost, and lost again. You could lose your soul to the Black Mark if you weren’t careful.

  A man in a silver shirt and tight black trousers lounged against a table, watching me. I ignored his predatory gaze. Yah, I recognized his arrogant body language, knew the aristocratic sheen of his glit-rags. He was probably among the wealthiest of the wealthy in Cries, illicitly coming to the Black Mark in the depths of the true Undercity. Sure, he had plenty to offer—gifts, drugs, and who knew what the hell else. I didn’t care. I stalked past him without a glance.

  Someone caught my arm. I swung around, raising my fist, my adrenalin surging—and froze. A bartender stood there. Her slinksuit showed more skin than it covered, her makeup glittered, and the holo-stars in her black hair sparkled.

  “Eh.” I lowered my arm. I had no intention of slugging my best friend. “Dara.”

  She pulled me over to the bar and spoke in the terse Undercity dialect. “What goes? You look ready to blow.”

  “Need talk to Jak,” I said. “Fast.” He always had his ear tuned to the Undercity whisper mill. If any rumors were going around about what had happened at the gala, he’d know.

  “I get. Stay here.” Dara sped off, soon lost amid the patrons and holos. Taking a deep breath, I leaned against the bar, surveying the clientele to see if their behavior offered any useful info they didn’t know they were revealing. I recognized a few guests from the gala, come here to slum it in the Undercity’s infamous den of vice. I watched them discreetly, but no one did anything interesting.

  The other bartenders left me alone, though they did glance my way when they thought I didn’t notice. It would be all over the Undercity whisper mill tomorrow: Bhaaj s
howed up at the casino dressed like a blitzed out city slick instead of like Bhaaj.

  A group of slicks wandered over to me, two men and two women, all dressed in scraps of metallic cloth that covered almost none of their bodies. They looked like cyb-fibs, a weird trend among the wealthy in Cries, pretending they were machines rather than people. One of the men had a gold face, and the woman with him had eyes the color of polished titanium coins. The other woman had a cybernetic arm that glowed with tech-mech. It looked like solid gold, but more likely it used some hardened alloy that wouldn’t dent. The second man had implants in his ears that flashed in light patterns I knew were supposed to make me dizzy. They didn’t have the intended effect any more than the swirling holos in the casino could entice me to gamble. I’d never been particularly susceptible to suggestion, and the biomech in my body further blocked the effects.

  The man with ear implants leaned against the bar next to me and gave me a once over, letting his gaze linger on my body. I felt like punching him. He leaned in closer, bringing his lips to my ear, and spoke in the Cries dialect. “You’ve good cyb. I’ve got better. Try it out.”

  “Fuck off,” I said, ever the epitome of tact. I didn’t have to act civilized at the Black Mark, and after some city slick had just tried to kill me, I had no intention of pretending otherwise.

  The woman with the cyber-arm laughed at her friend as she tilted her head at me. “You won’t get honey from that kit.”

  Kit my ass. I might look young, but I was probably twice their age.

  The man took my arm. “Your accent is Undercity. You’re a dust rat, aren’t you?”

  I twisted out of his grip and pulled his arm behind his back while I swung him around. “Touch me again, asshole,” I said in a perfect Cries accent, “and I’ll break your elbow.”

  “Hey!” The woman with the cyber-arm pulled him free. “Get your respect together, rat,” she snapped at me. “Or you’ll regret it.”

  She had that tone I hated. I tensed, my fist clenching—

  Bhaaj, stand down, Max thought. Let it go.