by PJ McDermott
“Other than a handful of highly placed naurs in the government, nobody is supposed to know about your mission here. If the Pharlaxians have penetrated the inner sanctum...”
Hickory felt the blood drain from her face as the implication sank in. “They may not be interested in the Castalie, but they might see some advantage in kidnapping an Earthman,” she finished.
Jess shook her head. “No—I don’t believe it. Why would revolutionaries take Gareth to the peacekeeper compound?”
“The Pharlaxians are known to function secretly inside the police. The Chief of the Peacekeepers, Josipe-sѐr-Amagon, is a government appointee and has been trying to root them out for years. But if Gareth was taken to the Peace compound, it’s possible one of Josipe’s senior naurs is running his own show. I know the Chief personally. I’m sure he will see us right away.”
Jess glared at Nolanski, her nostrils flaring. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us about these Pharlaxians last night when we asked about political unrest?”
Nolanski shrank from her anger. “What d’you mean? I did say to you.” His face turned ashen and he blinked rapidly.
“Rumblings! You called it rumblings.”
Josipe-sѐr-Amagon was less than happy to admit them and proved unable to shed any light on Gareth’s whereabouts. “There was a disturbance at Silver Lake earlier today, but my guards tell me it was all over by the time they arrived. They didn’t have cause to arrest anyone.”
Hickory was about to protest, but Nolanski got in first. “Josipe, surely your guards found some witnesses,” he said.
The Chief bristled. “Of course. I don’t doubt that your colleague has been kidnapped. I assure you I do not take this lightly. It is a most grievous crime, punishable by death, and the perpetrators will be dealt with.” He looked at Hickory and Jess. “I’m sorry. I do not have high hopes for your friend being found quickly, but I will investigate further and let you know of any progress. It may be a simple matter of ransom.” He ushered them out of his office.
Jess was fuming. Once outside, she turned on Nolanski. “That was a brush-off if ever I heard one. Why didn’t you insist on searching his prison? We know Gareth was taken there!”
“Ezekan prison is a rabbit warren. Most of the cells are below ground. Josipe would never let us go down there. More than likely he has some Avanauri locked up that he doesn’t want anybody to find out about. I know him, though. He’s embarrassed that some of his police have been running a covert operation under his nose. If Gareth is there, he’ll find him. The only thing to do is go back to the Embassy and wait.”
Neither Hickory nor Jess liked the idea, but they had no better option. They tried to contact Gareth on his SIM every few minutes but received no signal, which suggested it was either inoperative or Gareth was out of range. They didn’t like to think of the other alternative, which was that the device had stopped working because Gareth was unconscious, or worse.
“Do you have any sense of him at all?” said Jess, sitting on the edge of her chair and staring at the floor with her hands clasped.
“Not a thing,” said Hickory, gently. She squeezed Jess’s shoulder. “Normally, I can sense images from at least a mile away, and much further if I link to my SIM. So far, there’s nothing. Maybe the ionosphere is interfering with my empathic reception.”
They spent two days of frustration, waiting until a message arrived from Josipe-sѐr-Amagon asking them to meet him at the hill overlooking Silver Lake.
A Murder
Tears trickled down Hickory’s cheeks as she stared at the naked body lying on the grass. Despite the disfiguration, there could be no doubt it was Gareth. Patches of hair had been torn out by the roots, and his hands were bloody and swollen where his thumbs and fingers had been crushed. The young man before her had been cruelly tortured. The toes on his feet had been hacked off and burn marks covered his torso. Both dislocated shoulders lay at an unnatural angle while his eye sockets were bloodied and empty.
Jess sank to her knees and cradled Gareth’s head in her arms. She rocked his body back and forth as though sending a baby off to sleep, moaning in anguish. “Why?” she repeated, again and again. “Why Gareth? He was just a kid.”
Hickory raised Jess to her feet and held her tightly, feeling her shudder with sorrow. Not bothering to brush away her tears, she turned to Josipe-sѐr-Amagon.
The naur stood grim-faced over the body, speaking to Nolanski in a low voice. “I am sorry, my friend,” he said. “It is a terrible tragedy. We will find whoever did this thing and bring them to justice. You can rely on it.” He shook his head.
“Was it Pharlaxians?” asked Hickory, her face blank.
“It has many of their hallmarks, certainly. But see here.” He knelt beside the corpse and gently turned its head. “What would make these marks? I have never seen this before.”
Hickory released Jess and bent to look. There were two circular blotches about the size of a small coin on Gareth’s temples. They were red and blistered. The significance of the marks swept through her. She stood, struggling to keep the shock from her face “No, I don’t recognize this,” she said after a long pause.
The Chief looked at her thoughtfully, then shrugged. “I will have our physicians examine them. Perhaps they will be able to shed some light on this mystery.”
Nolanski glanced at Hickory, then said. “If you don’t mind, Josipe, I think it best if our own people do the postmortem.”
Hickory and Nolanski sat opposite each other at the dining table. Through the open windows, the nightly aurora was in full swing, but it didn’t lighten the mood in the room. Hickory pushed the food around on her plate and spoke little. Her mind was ablaze with the knowledge she had gained from seeing Gareth’s body at the park that afternoon. She looked up as Jess joined them.
Jess’s eyes were puffy, and her mouth was stern. She took a chair beside Hickory, nodded to Nolanski, and glanced at the empty seat next to her. “My apologies for breaking down like that—it was a terrible shock, but I’m better now. Have you decided what we’re going to do?”
Hickory placed her hand on top of Jess’s. “There’s no need to apologize, Jess. I’m finding it hard to believe he’s gone, too. It’s all right for you to feel angry and sad and whatever else. Gareth was young and vibrant—full of life, with so much to look forward to. His death is a tragic waste and finding him mutilated like that…”
Jess squeezed Hickory’s hand. “He ribbed the hell out of me by calling me ‘Mother,' but truth to tell he was just like one of my children. A willful, cheeky child, but I loved him as I would my own.” She spread her hands. “How could this happen? What was the point? Who would do such a thing, and why?”
Hickory’s brow darkened. “Good questions—all of them. I don’t have any answers, but I swear I’ll find out before I leave this place.”
Nolanski coughed. “I don’t mean to be unkind, but this is the risk we all take when we come to an unknown planet, isn’t it? The boy didn’t take the time to get to know the customs of this place. He was brash. He might have unwittingly insulted someone or some group—”
Hickory broke in angrily. “Did you actually look at the body? Nobody goes about torturing someone like that because they insulted them!”
Nolanski looked remorseful.
“And another thing, did you see those marks on his temple?”
“Marks—what marks?” said Jess shaking her head uncertainly.
“Whoever did this used thumbscrews and toe-wedging equipment, and I’d guess that his shoulders were dislocated when he was suspended from a strappado. Those are all primitive instruments to force confessions or extract information. They’re typical of the methods employed by security forces or terrorists in a culture in transition like Prosperine’s.”
Nolanski nodded his head. “Josipe has quite a collection, but I don’t—”
“The marks on his temples were inflicted by a powered machine. I’d bet they’re the result of using bafflers of some s
ort to short-circuit his implants so that he couldn’t call for help.”
Jess rose from her chair. “But that means—”
“The ones responsible for this know about implant technology. It can’t be a local. We’re looking for someone from off-world.”
Jess sat back, stunned. “Gareth was tortured because an off-worlder thought he knew something. Who would do…?” She shook her head. “About what?”
“I don’t know, but it must have something to do with our mission here. I think we need to talk to the IA.”
Nolanski nodded somberly. “I didn’t think it was the Pharlaxians. Gareth could have run afoul of smugglers. Some of those groups, like the Dark Suns, have the technology and they can be vicious—especially if they think their operation is in jeopardy. Perhaps the autopsy will tell us more.”
“Perhaps,” said Hickory. “I want to talk to the Agency and find out what we can do about it. I won’t let Gareth’s death go unanswered.”
Admiral George Lace leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. His perfectly manicured hands formed a steeple in front of his face.
Hickory felt a warm flush creep up her neck. She couldn’t rationalize whether this was caused by the recent events or because her father’s hologram image had joined the meeting. He appeared to be listening intently to the conversation between his lieutenant James Brandt, Nolanski, and Jess, who were exploring the possibility of smuggler intervention in the Alien Corps project.
When the light barrier was finally broken, scientists turned their minds to solving the concomitant problem of delays in communication resulting from the huge distances involved. The time interval over several light years was now no more than a few seconds.
“Commander Lace,” he said, interrupting Nolanski in mid-stream. “You’re sure it was Gareth. There’s no mistake?”
Hickory noted the look of annoyance on Nolanski’s face, and answered, “I’m pretty confident of it, Admiral: same build, same height, same coloring. I think we need to acknowledge he’s gone.” She looked at Jess. Nothing good could come from providing false hope.
Nolanski nodded his agreement. “I don’t have the full autopsy results as yet, but the SIM implant has been validated as Gareth’s. The DNA analysis will confirm it.”
The admiral looked at Hickory for a few seconds then gestured for Brandt to push on.
“All right, let’s look at the likely perpetrators. We’ve found three alien species on Prosperine,” Brandt said. He turned on a video hologram showing some footage of the suspect groups. “The Saturnine Raiders originally came from the Vindicine region. They settled on Prosperine three hundred years ago after their home world went through a nuclear winter following a planet-wide war.” The video showed a group of naurs sitting around a campfire in a country settlement. There was nothing remarkable about the people, except the children had no tails. “They brought what they could with them, but it was precious little. They resorted to piracy and smuggling to keep them going. But as you can see, fifteen generations later, they’ve pretty much assimilated into the local population. We’ve come across a few cases who survived culling at birth and where the Saturnine genes are dominant, but I doubt they have the technology or the desire for this kind of thing anymore.”
Nolanski interjected. “There’s a group of about fifty throwbacks living in the hinterland, but they’re a sorry bunch.”
The video switched to a second group of aliens. “The Dark Suns are more numerous—a loose association of professional thieves and adventurers from all over the galaxy. They come and go, running the Agency’s blockade, keeping to deep cover while they’re here.”
This group was human-like—they had hair, but they were an eclectic mixture of races, short and tall, fat and thin, broad and narrow, black, white, red and green skin. The one unifying feature was that each had a dark round tattoo on one side of their face.
“They deal mainly in luxury items in exchange for precious metals and jewels,” said Brandt. “This is the mob Jeb has been trying to eradicate for a while now. The Dark Suns could be involved in something like this.”
Hickory glanced at Nolanski. He had his arms folded and was staring stony-faced at Brandt.
“The third group we call ‘the invisible.’ We have no video of them, but they are much more likely prospects for kidnap and murder. They’ve come to Prosperine relatively recently, fleeing the law in the nearby Epsilon sector. They’re a gang of night-thugs who lend their muscle to the highest bidder. The last we heard they were in Erlach, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see they were working with a political group like the Pharlaxians.”
Though he was a hologram image, projected across light years, Hickory could feel her father’s presence, watching silently in the background. “You think that’s where we should look first, then?” she asked Brandt.
The admiral rapped on the table and spoke, jolting Hickory. “James, what’s the probability that one of the non-aligned planets is involved?”
Brandt nodded. “It’s certainly possible, sir. We know the NAP are nosing about, but I don’t have any intelligence to indicate they’re working with the Pharlaxians.”
“If they are, they won’t stop at murder to upset the Agency’s plan,” said the admiral.
Hickory turned to face her father “Why would they kill Gareth, though? The Alien Corps isn’t working for the IA,” she said. “Are they?”
Her father said nothing, which strengthened her belief that he and Cortherien had a secret agreement, but now wasn’t the right time to pursue it. “How do I find the Pharlaxians?” she said, surveying the attendees.
The admiral nodded and said tersely, “James can help with that. He’s in charge of planet security until I return from Earth.” He shuffled some documents that lay in front of him and looked up. “Gentlemen and Jess, thank you for your attendance, but time is short, and I’d appreciate a few minutes alone with my daughter.”
Brandt saluted and left the room with Nolanski and Jess, who cast an anxious glance over her shoulder.
The admiral and his daughter faced each other across a gap of a billion miles geographically and almost as far emotionally.
“The Alien Corps isn’t working for the IA,” said George Lace, and then he shook his head. “The Corps were called in because you people are the experts in handling complex religious situations. We don’t have a clue what this guy’s agenda is, this Kar-sѐr-Sephiryth.”
“And you’re worried how he might impact on your interest in the crynidium? Just what deal did you strike with Prefect Cortherien?” said Hickory.
“Hickory, please don’t be naïve—the Agency and the Corps often work together for the greater good. We both have similar aims—seeking to bring unity of purpose and meaning to humankind’s existence.”
Hickory smiled wryly. Her father had a way of twisting things to suit his own ends. But she now knew that there was an arrangement between the two organizations, one that she should have been told about. She wondered what that agreement contained and whether it had any bearing on Gareth’s death.
“One thing I don’t understand. I know you desperately want the rights to the crynidium and you would go to any lengths to prevent the non-aligned planets from getting their hands on it.” She held her hand up as her father started to protest. “Please sir, let me finish. Until now you haven’t allowed any planet to become a member unless their social development is comparable to IA planets. Do you really need the crynidium so badly that you would waive that rule?”
Her father looked at her over his hands, his elbows resting on the table. He sighed. “You see conspiracies where none exist. It’s true, the universe does have a desperate need for faster-than-light fuel. It would be disastrous if something were to rob us of this opportunity. But no, we’re not so desperate as to break our primary rule. When Prosperine is ready to join the Agency, she will be welcomed with open arms. We estimate that will be around five hundred years from now.”
Hickory snorted, nod
ding her head. “And in the meantime?”
“In the interim, we continue negotiating with the Prosperine authorities.” He held his arms wide, palms open, as though this was the obvious course of action. “What did you think? That we would take the crynidium by force?”
Hickory knew there was no point in “negotiating” if the government continued to consider crynidium as sacrosanct. “Negotiating? You mean trying to destroy their traditions and religious beliefs?” A breakdown in the people’s faith in Balor would certainly accelerate a decision in the IA’s favor.
“All of this speculation is beside the point,” said the admiral. “We both have a job to do.” He paused and nodded, then smiled “It’s good to see you again, Hickory, even if you don’t trust me. You look more like your mother every time I see you.”
She could feel tears at the corners of her eyes. “You don’t see me often enough to say that. You couldn’t even be bothered to visit me when you were in town last time. Why didn’t you?”
Hickory had hidden the hurt of her father’s indifference from everyone, pushing it so deep that she refused to acknowledge it. He had never spoken to her about her mother. His simple comparison made her feel like a child again, confused by his aloofness and desperate for his approval.
His face was sallow and lined, and there was sadness in his eyes. He looked older than his years. Then he pressed his lips together, and she saw his heart harden.
“I really didn’t have the time. There are always too many things to do.” His chin came up and he straightened his back. “In any case, you’ve been doing pretty well without me all these years.”
“You don’t seem to mind catching up with Michael.” The words escaped unbidden, and she felt the poison on her tongue, bitter and slimy like the aftertaste of vomit. Instantly she wished she could take her words back.
Her father’s eyes fell. “Mike is a different kind of person. You’ve always been the confident one. He’s six years younger and much less sure of himself. Mike, well, needs me—you don’t.”