Tall, graceful Dhurries squatted regally along the street in their loincloths, tarlarl sticks smoking between long, nervous fingers as they gambled with brightly colored splits and argued among themselves. Once aristocrats of the ancient tribes, they now waited for hire as bearers and scouts for the daily expeditions heading out from Beros. Ulangs, thickset and belligerent, with bristling crests of coarse ash-colored hair, refused to demean themselves by pandering to the tourists. Yulies was their word for the rich people who flocked to Playworld for a few weeks of idleness. Rather than catering to them, they flung themselves instead into commerce where they were known to be fierce, shrewd, and ready to cheat anyone who was not sharp enough to catch them out. Then there were the Ishuts, most primitive of all. Only outcasts of that tribe ever drifted into the Beros slums, and they always caused trouble.
Two were causing trouble now, circling an alarmed peddler and nipping at his heels with their pointed sticks. The thronging crowd parted around this disturbance, pausing with intent curiosity, and in the hush a Ulang merchant’s reedy voice rang out:
“Twenty guillens for this fine rug. A fine rug, sir. Woven by deft…” His wheedling trailed off as the peddler screamed and cowered down with his tray of wares clutched in his arms.
Frowning, Costa scanned the crowd swiftly for a ceep, but as usual whenever trouble erupted in the bazaar, no city patrollers were around. The one she had passed a few streets back was too far away to intervene here. She reached wearily for her strifer, ready to draw it if one of the Ishuts went for the peddler’s throat. With another scream, this time of rage, the peddler threw down his tray of painted balls and fled. Ishut laughter mocked his flight as his tormenters scooped up the balls and bore them triumphantly away.
Children, thought Costa with contempt, letting her wrist swing away from her weapon. Dangerous, superstitious children. Ishuts should be kept out of the city, they and their Kanta priests. With narrowed eyes she watched the two thieves race up the street to gleefully deliver their loot into the hands of a black-robed priest with a double crossing of dried blood smeared on his shaven brow. He praised them, and when they raced on with laughter he let the tribute roll indifferently from his hands.
Costa shrugged and turned to stride on, but in that instant as the crowd pressed around her a hand seized her from behind, crushing her arm and dragging her into a narrow alley between two shops. Something thin and sharp pricked her forearm, making it sting. She snarled in fury, her free hand striking with a sleeve knife. It split through thick cloth to stab at nothing solid. Startled, Costa stared wide-eyed at the Omcri holding her. A chill pierced her to the second part, and if long established cynicisms prevented her from making a visible sign of warding, she wished uneasily in her heart to do so.
“Loose me, faceless one!” she said with a snap to hide her fear. “You detain an officer of the—”
“Identity known,” said the double-timbred voice that issued from no living throat. Yet Omcris were not machines. The grip tightened on her arm, cutting off circulation. “Ambition comes hard on Playworld. We sell. You buy. Talk now, yes?”
How did it know? Her topaz eyes fell swiftly from the obsidian void swirling beneath the cowl of the Omcri’s robe to the black-gloved hand gripping her arm. Rage and indignation stormed through her. Janal’s working office was supposed to be snoop clean. Obviously it was not! Nameless, faceless, untraceable Omcris were often used as couriers of death, placing assassination orders across the galaxy. And the Kublai of Drugh was to arrive in less than an hour.
Her head lifted. “You won’t hire me to chop the neck of His Supreme Glory. Now loose me, devil-thing, or eat strifer fire.”
In silence the Omcri released her arm and glided rapidly through the crowd, which moved aside with revulsion. In moments it had disappeared from sight. Her arm tingling as circulation returned, Costa drew in a breath through her teeth, shaking from the adrenaline still pumping through her gut. Mercy of Moii! She had never been that close to one of the things before, and she hoped she never would be again. Jerking up her sleeve, she swiftly examined her arm. A tiny red prick marred the flesh. The skin around the spot was oddly cold to the touch. She frowned with a shiver.
Wiping the sweat from beneath the warrior braid coiled over her brow, Costa entered the first wineshop she came to. This one was large and of a certain reputation. Here, ruffians of countless systems gathered in dark corners to plot and barter. Normally she never entered the place, but she wanted a drink desperately now. Strifers were worn openly in defiance of the ordinances, so the only thing which set her apart from the rest of the company was the patrol uniform she wore. Hard looks of hostility hit her when she walked in.
The burly door guard stepped forward to intercept her. “Oi, Pepe,” he said in toneless Unise. “You coming in on business? Maybe the ceeps won’t like that, eh?”
It was too late to retreat without incurring jeers that would bounce off any patroller setting foot in the place for the next several months. Costa overcame the urge to ease out, and looked the man in the eye.
“What the vice squads do is their business. My business is a dry throat,” she said and walked past him with her back itching, expecting him to plant steel in it at any moment. No one in here would mourn or report the death of a nosy patroller. But the guard let her pass, and after a moment the rigidity in her spine eased.
The tables were filled, save for one. She stopped in dismay as she saw the Omcri sitting before her in solitude. Disdaining a chair, it floated as though suspended on antigrav units. The small rip in its robe killed her hope that it might be a different Omcri than the one that had accosted her. She cursed beneath her breath, and snapped up all her lids to penetrate the farthest reaches of the gloom in hope of one small, overlooked, and empty table. Nothing.
“We talk now, yes?” said the Omcri.
The queer coldness in her arm intensified. She gazed at it, troubled, then sat down at the low table with her back to the wall. She kept one hand on her strifer, her heart thundering as she strove to understand how she had been manipulated into this. Worse, spies ran rampant in the bazaar. At any moment the extraordinary conduct of a patroller seated in the close company of an Omcri could be reported. She had taken an oath to uphold the service, the Directory, and the standards of Playworld; she had spent her life conforming her wild nature to rigid disciplines, taking care to let nothing mar her record. Yet now, after all the work, sweat, and sacrifice, she still could not advance. The patrol had been a toehold for her ambitions. Now it was an abyss. And maybe she didn’t care if a spy reported her.
A waiter sidled up with the drinks of cheap tinsel they had to pay for and stood ready for them to order what they really wanted.
“I’ll have slow-water, if it’s fresh,” she said, nervously flinging back her warrior braid.
The Omcri lifted the back of its hand, and the waiter departed hastily.
“Now we talk,” said the faceless one, leaning slightly toward her.
In the smoky gloom, the place where its face should have been was an unworldly black emptiness. But now and then she caught a faint, greenish glimmer through the swirling patterns, like dim starlight seen through nebula clouds. The coldness of nonexistence hung upon the creature. And a slight, tainted scent struck her nostrils. She shivered again.
“I am not an assassin for hire, Omcri,” she said, fingers curling more tightly upon the polished butt of her strifer. “Mark that. I came in here to drink, nothing more.”
“Anger, great. Heart, flame. Emotions, unimportant to he who speaks through this one. Do nothing. Be gone in jungle at appointed time, and death will come to the protected one.”
Costa drew in a breath slowly. Maybe she should pretend to go along with this for a while, if only to learn more for her report to Janal. “I understand now,” she said. “But my squad will just guide the expedition. His Supreme Glory will have his own guards.”
The Omcri made a derisive sound. “Palace guard worry us not.
Planet patrol not same. We know warriors. We know of you.”
She warmed to the compliment even as the third part of her warned great caution. “Whose courier are you?”
The Omcri drew back abruptly. “Not know. Not say. We buy ambition. You sell service. Yes?”
She slumped back in her chair, fighting for time. “What price?”
The Omcri drew a short slender wand from its wide sleeve. The wand was banded in many different colors, and the faceless one adjusted these into a pattern of descending hues of lavender before extending it. Her hand jerked, oversetting the tinsel which flowed in a muddy stain across the table. The offer was generous enough to make her head spin, enough to pay for a vacation here on Playworld, and certainly enough to enable her to leave the planet forever. Temptation burned her throat, but she curled her cold, shaking fingers into a fist and did not touch the wand.
She frowned. “Money can’t be spent in a detention ward.”
“Ambition, great. Ambition, known. Ambition, fulfilled,” said the Omcri.
She flinched. “Moii’s oath, death-dealer! You can’t hand me a release from my contract here. You can’t get me into the Rangers. And you certainly can’t obtain for me a new ID grid implant.”
“All things can be done. New identity acceptable condition for contract. You have sold. We have bought—”
“I haven’t touched that wand,” she said swiftly, panicked by this attempt to seal a bargain.
The Omcri bowed its head. “No need. When time comes, you will do.” Gloved fingers gently touched her arm, making her flinch. “Ambition, great. Emotions, known. Et!”
It rose swiftly from the table and glided away just as the waiter brought her slow-water. She sipped the drink thoughtfully, a pulse beating hard in her throat as the stuff burned down to her stomach. All her instincts were twisting knives within her. She had checked once on the cost of a new identity. She had even hired a spy to find out what a smuggler charged for lifting living cargo off-planet. The costs for both were astronomical, and back then, of course, she had been confident of her own abilities and of the tradition of granting a good officer release after two cycles of exceptional duty. Not for her, however, never for her!
She slammed guillens on the table and strode outside angrily into the blazing heat to find a call booth. A beep sounded in her ear, and in seconds a bland voice responded over the tinny connection:
“Beros HQ. Command Central. Specify section.”
“Commander Janal’s office. Priority call.”
There was an infinitesimal pause, then: “Clearance code please. Stand by for reading—”
Mercy of Moii! Was she a fool? Costa cut the connection and ejected herself from the call booth. A snoop had intercepted that connection! And she had checked the call booth herself before using it. Clean on her end, which meant Janal’s office was not. Someone had expertly broken his security. She glanced at her chronometer and cursed loudly enough to make a veiled passerby leap quickly to one side and scurry on. There was no time to find an alternative way to reach the commander now. She had to get out to the landing field. Damn and damn again! This left her out in the cold completely, without even her good squad, thanks to her stupid, bruised pride. Costa squared her chin. She would manage somehow, and, by Demos, that Omcri would find he had made a poor bargain indeed.
Chapter Two
A hot raw wind blew across the open field of the auxiliary port of call. Reserved for local, small shuttle, and racing traffic, the auxiliary port lay cupped in the wide bowels of a sharp-edged lava canyon, isolated and lonely, with Beros cut off from sight by the towering black cliffs. Only the incessant roar and turbulence from scout craft and cargo loaders landing and taking off in screaming arcs destroyed the illusion of desolation.
Bolts of light flashed from the aqua-tinted sky as the brazen, low-hanging sun reflected off metal. Costa squinted and stepped away from the shade edging the side of the elegant reception building. All three inner lids snapped down over her eyes and she gazed intently upwards at the incoming craft, noting the unusual slant of trajectory which marked it as Drugh, even before it came close enough for her to see the wide, low-slung body of the shuttle.
“Squad.” She glanced briefly at the six she had mustered. One was female, a taciturn Ulang of habitually bitter expression, dried to leather and bone, with lazy blood-red eyes, a short-cropped hair crest, and a well-ashed tarlarl stick drooping from her lips.
At Costa’s gesture, they all pried themselves from the shade and made a slight effort to straighten rumpled tunics. Their boots were scuffed, their strifers unpolished, their fatigues hard worn. They were all strangers to each other and lacked any esprit de corps. As a group they weren’t much, and the perfectionist in Costa writhed at the thought of presenting this sorry band to His Supreme Glory instead of a handpicked squad of her best. Then she gave herself a bitter shake. What did it matter? She could stop trying; she wasn’t going anywhere.
The shuttle made its final approach. In silence, well aware of the two Directors and their entourage standing inside the polarized windows of the reception building, the squad followed Costa out to the edge of the landing field. Costa shouted and waved an arm at the Dhurrie bearers in their scarlet loincloths, and slowly they unfolded their long-muscled limbs off the dust-whipped ground to line up behind the squad. Costa’s eyes ranged across them all. She spoke sharply once again, and the Ulang spat out her tarlarl stick.
Close up, the Drugh shuttle was enormous and squat of line. Bold royal insignia emblazoned the sides. The engines whined down and cut, giving the official Beros welcoming delegation time to file out into the sunlight and heat at a decorous shuffle. Costa waited poised, her topaz eyes locked on the hatch. As soon as it opened with an abrupt rush of air, she barked the order, and the squad snapped to attention.
The ramp folded out smoothly as the hatch locked open. A figure stood just within the shadows of the interior. His Glory was impatient, she thought, but then the man minced down the ramp into the light. She saw the gray uniform and the silver stripes before she saw his face, and the sight hit her like a sharp blow to the stomach. A Ranger!
Behind him, tall, heavily muscled guards in harness and light armor lined up on either side of the ramp with ceremonial gold-tipped spears held at ramrod attention. Costa took no notice of them. Her eyes could not leave the Ranger as he approached her. Only now as he drew near, she saw she had been mistaken. The elaborate shoulder padding, flared cut, and expensive fabric betrayed the tunic to be a fashionable parody of a uniform. Her eyes narrowed to an icy green as this creature halted before her.
His own gaze, jaded and cynical, swept across her contingent. Annoyance twisted his face painted with lines of rank, and he glared at her. “I am Bessam al-zk. Mah to the household of His Supreme Glory. Identify yourself.”
“Lieutenant Costa, sir.”
He lifted a dark, delicately plucked brow, and his painted mouth tightened. “And you are in charge of this…squad?”
She heard the thinly veiled derision, and anger pounded a hard pulse through her throat. She lifted her chin a fraction higher. “Sir!”
“Who is your superior?”
“Commander Janal.”
He pointed to the communicator on her belt. “Get him. I wish to request another officer.”
“On what grounds?”
“Sex. A female cannot be permitted to guard His Supreme Glory.” His eyes shifted to the Ulang. “She must be replaced as well.”
For a moment Costa could not believe she had heard correctly. Then her eyes heated to a bright topaz. “There is no gender in the service. You violate my honor as a warrior.”
“Zuthat ma dal!” He swept out his hand in anger. “The laws of pilgrimage are strict. This defilement cannot be permitted.”
“I wasn’t notified of your authority, sir. My superiors have given me this command, and, aside from the personal guard of His Supreme Glory, I am in charge of the Kublai’s well-being.”
&nb
sp; “No.”
Her hand moved by reflex for her strifer, but iron-hard discipline guided it instead to her communicator. She thumbed open a channel, cutting across the drone’s standard reply. “Squad four-niner requesting priority channel to Commander Janal. No coding. Open, please.”
“Lieutenant, what is the meaning of this delay?” demanded one of the bureaucrats assigned to the welcoming delegation now wilting in the heat. “What is the difficulty? The Kublai must not be kept waiting for any reason—”
“His Supreme Glory must not be defiled,” snapped Bessam, quelling the man.
“Defiled? I-I do not understand.”
Costa glanced up while the communicator crackled on delay. “Apparently females cannot be present. We were not informed of this cultural difficulty in our briefing.”
The bureaucrat exclaimed and made ineffectual little shooing motions with his plump hands. “Then you must leave and quickly. We must not offend His Glory.”
“I do not absent my post without authorization,” said Costa through her teeth, and turned away as the bureaucrat gobbled in affront.
“Janal here,” came the static-filled voice.
Costa lifted the communicator and reported in a tight, emotionless voice. This should have been foreseen and handled properly, she thought, while blood-shame burned through her strongly enough to make her hand shake. The Kublai was nothing but a gilded boy without even so much as a battle scar; she should have taken up the Omcri’s offer, shipping lanes and interplanetary war be damned.
The Omcri Matrix Page 2