The Hidden World

by Melinda Snodgrass

  The furrows on her father’s forehead were smoothing. Mercedes slumped a bit with relief. She was reminded again that being an intelligence officer went beyond merely snooping. A strong grounding in psychology played a part as well. There was also the advantage that the two men had known each other since the Emperor had been a teenager and Kemel a wet-behind-the-ears young agent. She just found it sad that her father, younger by seven years, was far less sharp than the SEGU head.

  “Yes, yes, I understand why you’d be concerned. Good you came to me.” The Emperor looked at Davin. “What do you have, Admiral?”

  “Nothing yet, sir, but we’re working closely with SEGU to pinpoint the location of our troops.”

  “Good. Good.” Her father paused. “And then?”

  It was Mercedes’ cue. She sat on a corner of the desk closest to her father. “We go in and get them.”

  “Send a message, eh?” He gazed at her fondly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Davin going to lead this?” Fernán asked. “Or Boho?”

  Davin stepped in on the other side of the Emperor. Mercedes reflected that this had all the hallmarks of an intricate dance. “I think it would send a more powerful message if the Infanta herself were to be in command of the strike force.”

  “Show the people the importance you place on our brave soldiers,” Kemel added.

  Her father straightened in his chair and unconsciously tried to suck in his gut. “Perhaps I should dust off the uniform and handle this myself.”

  She and Davin exchanged panicked glances. Before she could speak Kemel stepped in. “An excellent suggestion, Highness.” He motioned for them to start heading for the door. Every fiber in her body strained against that, but Mercedes obeyed, deferring to the intelligence chief’s reading of the situation and the forty-year friendship between the two men.

  Just before they reached the door, Kemel paused, looked back. “Sir, what about the press?”

  “Eh, what?”

  “They’re such jackals. How do you think they’ll interpret you leaving the capital rather than trusting to your heir?” Her father’s frown was back. “I’m also concerned because you and the Empress are due to take your annual skiing holiday. If you cancel it elevates these corsairs in the minds of the public. Instead of criminals they become a threat worthy of the attention of the Emperor himself. I hate to see them dignified in that way.”

  “Hmm, I see your point.” He smiled at Mercedes. “So, are you ready to bloody a few noses and send some men to Hell?”

  “Absolutely, sir, if it will get back our people.” She saluted her father then added, “I’ll make you proud, sir.”

  “You always do.” He looked back to some papers on his desk, glanced back at her with a rather melancholy smile. “Just wish you’d make me a grandpa.”

  And in one statement her victory turned to ash.

  5

  CONVENIENT COUPLES

  The world beneath them was a jewel. Green and blue, white banded clouds like the veils on an exotic dancer, but it was a cruel cheat, and an ironic, cosmic lie. When the planet had first been discovered the early settlers had named it Paradise and the first settlement Eden. Human expansion to the stars had been a story of a truculent and aggressive species meeting and conquering the unsuspecting members of the five great alien races in this particular spiral arm of the galaxy. The conquest even extended to Terran plant life. Local flora wilted and died in the face of this new invading challenger.

  We’re the kudzu of the galaxy, Tracy reflected as he gazed at the beautiful globe. But not here.

  On this world the local flora carried a plant virus that was fatal to humans and their animals and it managed to infect the Earth plants with the same virus. No food could be grown on the planet. No Earth animals could graze the lush meadows. No human could enjoy the magnificent vistas of snowcapped mountains, sapphire lakes, majestic forests, and warm oceans without wearing a hazmat suit. Not because the air would kill them, but because they would inhale the spores, and inevitably sneeze or cough and bring the deadly pathogen inside the sealed and filtered domes where the population had to live. Inside the domes they grew what food they could and imported the majority. There was virtually no livestock, just house pets. The descendants of those first hopeful settlers had petitioned to change it in the planetary registry—it was now known as Paradise Lost. Few people immigrated to the planet; mostly the elderly, looking for a place to retire in an astoundingly sterile environment with low housing costs, people with auto-immune deficiencies, terrible asthma or allergies. Yet somehow the planet had managed to create a robust economy. Not on the planet, but in orbit above it at the San Pedro cosmódromo where used ships and ship parts were bought and sold.

  Tracy used the sensors to plot a course through the maze of metal dancing in complex orbits over the world below. There were older model racing pinnaces, battered shuttles, freighters, even one ancient space liner. Rarely were there military craft, but occasionally something small would slip through. It was here that Tracy had acquired the decommissioned Talon to use as a shuttle for the Selkie. An actual shuttle craft was too large for the cargo bay on the freighter. The Talon was a good compromise, and it had the added bonus of looking very cool with its swept-back wings and needle nose. Naturally the one they had bought had had the guns and missiles removed.

  He couldn’t resist occasionally glancing through the viewport. Only at the massive shipyard at Cuandru and at fleet headquarters at Hellfire could one see more ships or pieces of ships. It was a kaleidoscope of metal and engineering that glittered in the unfiltered light from the star. Some men’s hearts soared at the sight of natural beauty or a beautiful woman. Tracy loved ships. Loved everything they represented. The chance to break free of constraints, of gravity, of economics, of society, of class, and of birth. Not that there wasn’t a woman waiting for him on the cosmódromo. He had sent Lisbet a message as soon as they translated out of Fold at the edge of the solar system.

  “Docking instructions coming through, Ollie… Trac… Captain.” Baca’s stutter lamely ended up on the title.

  Tracy nodded and plotted their final approach. The halo of metal was left behind and the station was in view. It was a traditional torus. Ships nuzzled against the rim like nursing piglets. They were almost all freighters, but he did spot one elegant private yacht. Someone clearly had something essential break. This wasn’t a place that normally catered to the FFH, being far too rough, and with none of the amenities that the nobility demanded. Tracy left his chair and went to stand at Luis’ shoulder as he feathered the engines to bring them in to dock.

  “You trying to make me nervous?” Baca asked.

  “Giving you moral support.”

  “He did fine at New Hope,” Jahan said. “Put your ass back in the chair and stop micro-managing. You’re the one who said there needs to be more than one person who can fly this crate,” the Isanjo concluded.

  “Don’t call her a crate,” Graarack said and she stroked her console with a claw. “She doesn’t like it.”

  Tracy and his XO exchanged a glance. The Sidone did tend to be deeply into the mystical. “Woo woo” as Jax put it, and right on cue the Tiponi rustled his fronds. His version of a derisive chuckle. Graarack clicked her beak in mock annoyance. It had taken Tracy years to learn to read the meanings and nuances of his alien crew mates’ behaviors, and he sensed he had only scratched the surface. Perhaps there was a reason, apart from sheer xenophobia, that humans had just conquered the alien races they had met rather than try to negotiate. Understanding a different person wasn’t easy. When it was an alien race… well, humans weren’t known for their patience.

  “Damn it, stop using my own words against me,” Tracy complained, but he returned to his chair. He tried to keep his hands from either gripping the arms or his fingers from moving as if handling the controls. He wasn’t sure he succeeded, but Luis was focused on his task and didn’t notice. Jahan did and she gave him a fang-revealing grin. He gl
ared at her.

  Luis did a good job. The actual touch on the docking clamps was a bit harder than Tracy liked, but overall it was handled well. Graarack powered down the engines. Jax readied the docking documents. Dalea entered the bridge carrying a tap-pad.

  “Who’s going onto the station?” she asked.

  “All of us if we’re smart,” Luis caroled.

  “Thank you,” the gentle Hajin said. “I was actually planning to stay aboard.”

  “Sorry,” the younger human muttered. Tracy hid a grin. The seventeen years that separated him from Luis felt like a lifetime sometimes.

  “Point is we need to replenish our groceries and I have a list.” Luis looked miserable.

  “I’ll handle it,” Tracy said. He keyed his ring and Dalea sent over the list. “I expect Luis wants to get his rockets… er… lubed.”

  “Like you’re not going to the Sweet Retreat. And I’m not planning on paying for it, el viejo.”

  Tracy let the old man crack and the reminder he was going to be spending his time in a whore house pass, and not just because he had to deliver the contraceptives. Once he had been twenty-seven and stupid. “Go on then, el muchacho.” He enjoyed sliding in the diminutive, but Luis was too excited to notice.

  He went clattering off the bridge. “I gotta change!”

  “God alone knows what ridiculous getup he’ll put on,” Jahan said with a huffing laugh.

  “I will handle the fees and paperwork on my way to the misting,” Jax said. “Then I’ll go check out loaders. We need to replace the one that was stolen.” Tracy sighed. That was going to put them back a grand.

  “Graarack, what about you?” Tracy asked.

  “A nice dinner,” the spider replied.

  Tracy shot an inquiring glance at his XO. “I have family working on ships here. A nephew and his wife. We’ll have dinner together at their apartment.”

  Tracy nodded. He knew that Jahan had three sisters and two brothers and this was the seventh nephew he had heard about. He wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a large extended family. There was only Tracy’s father. His mother had died when he was six and Alexander had never remarried, which was a very uncommon thing in the League. The government had promoted policies that encouraged large families in an effort to outbreed the conquered aliens. The League took it so seriously that one-child families and unmarried citizens paid a penalty to the government. Only a medical diagnosis could get you out of the fine. Since Oliver Randall was a fabrication, Tracy had procured just such a document to go along with all his other fake papers so he could avoid paying. Better to be thought sterile than try and create a phantom family. First rule of living under an assumed identity—keep it simple. Too much complexity could raise flags and give the authorities an investigative hook.

  He gathered up his holdall with the contraband birth control carefully repacked in candy wrappers. Inspections were lax at San Pedro, and no bored customs agent wanted to tear open packaging. In case they ran across an agent with a sweet tooth there were a few actual candies that could be offered. “Well, I’m off. See you all tomorrow.”

  “Captain,” Jahan called. “Do you have something for Lisbet?”

  Tracy glanced back at the Isanjo. “We’re not kids on a first date.”

  “Is she a woman?” the alien asked.

  “Yeah.” His tone screamed obviously.

  “Then you should have a little something for her. Especially after all these months. My hubby knows I would hand him his ears if he didn’t have something for me.”

  “We’re just friends—”

  “Who fuck. You really don’t know much about women, do you, Captain? At least take her a bouquet of flowers. It might deepen your understanding of our sex.”

  “We are not afflicted by all this romance nonsense,” Jax said with a superior sniff.

  “Yeah, because you don’t actually have sexes and you’re a tree,” Jahan said.

  “It might also be an example of how you are aping human culture,” the Flute said.

  “No, it’s an example of how I’m warm-blooded and passionate and I love my husband.”

  “Despite spending so much time apart from him.”

  Tracy fled before the argument between his shipmates became even more heated.

  * * *

  His ScoopRing was pricking his index finger. Boho tried to ignore it since his prick was busily plowing the deepest recesses of Señora Daphne’s warm cunt. It was a sunny afternoon in Kronos’s capital city and being that it was an afternoon on a weekday Señora Daphne’s banker husband was off at the aforementioned bank busily toting up the value of the goods from the Cara’ot ship. Even after the bloodsucker took his cut, Boho was going to come out with a tidy sum. Enough to pay off his debt to the casino, buy a bauble for Marquis Lacey’s greedy but lovely youngest daughter, and buy the silence of the captain who actually ran his ship while Boho served as the commodore of the squadron.

  The pricking didn’t stop and in fact it went to emergency signal, sending a jolt of electricity into his finger that left his right hand cramping from the pain.

  “Fuck!” he bellowed and felt his penis deflate.

  Daphne’s eyes snapped open. “What? What’s wrong?”

  He kissed her pouting lips, swollen from his kisses and bites. “Sorry, love, duty calls. I have to take this.”

  He pulled out and rolled off of her. Padded naked across the room toward the window. As he passed the elegant full-length framed mirror he paused to study his reflection. Forty-four but he believed he could pass for early thirties. A few crow’s feet spiked around his eyes, but for the most part his caramel skin was smooth. His hair was still thick and glossy black, and the few gray hairs had been expertly removed by his valet. Three years before he had grown a mustache and he liked the rakish look it gave him. He also knew that Mercedes didn’t, which made him like it all the more. It was a small and probably unworthy form of rebellion, but it still gave him comfort. Life as the consort had proved to be more chafing than he had expected. Perhaps if they’d ever managed to have children… But the role of royal stud had eluded him. At least he knew it wasn’t his fault. His hand went unconsciously to his cock and he cupped it for a moment. Five healthy kids. Three girls and two boys. And a couple of them had inherited his green eyes.

  Boho disabled the visual function before he accepted the call and controlled his desire to snarl a greeting. It might be his wife. But it wasn’t Mercedes. It was Captain Lord Eugene Montgomery, head of the promotions board. A hologram of the man’s face sprang up from the ring. There was an ashen hue to his dark skin.

  “Why the hell are you dark?” Montgomery demanded. “Where are you? Who’s with you?”

  “I was in the can,” Boho snapped. “And it’s none of your business.”

  “I need to know who’s listening.”

  Boho threw a smile back toward his mistress where she lay in a welter of silk sheets. Against the blazing white of the material she was like a delectable chocolate. She was idly flicking through the fashion sites on her ring. Since the sheet was at her waist her heavy breasts were very much in evidence. Boho was a breast man. Unlike Daphne, Mercedes was tall and, despite middle age adding a few bulges, still quite muscular, and she had a great rack. Daphne was a plump little armful. He went into the bathroom and closed the door. It was a gold and porcelain temple and, as far as Boho was concerned, in terrible taste, but what could one expect from the nouveau riche?

  “Some cunt I’m fucking. I’ll turn on security, but I doubt she’s an interstellar spy.”

  “I don’t need your contempt, Cullen. This is serious. I’ve been summoned to the palace. Wherever the fuck you are, and whoever the hell you’re fucking, you need to get back to Ouranos and back me up. The order came from SEGU under the seal of the Infanta and it was signed by old DeLonge himself. They asked for all my records, but in particular those of Esteban Singh. Something must have happened. What do you know about Singh?”

&
nbsp; “Why should I know anything about him? You’re the one with the records. You tell me.”

  Montgomery ummed and aaahed and finally produced words. “Sort of an intitulado. Father is a wealthy industrialist. They allowed the wife’s childless sister to adopt the boy. She had married into a knight’s family, which allowed Singh to attend the High Ground. The actual father paid the… ah… fee for his son. I tried to pull up information from fleet headquarters, but any information about Singh is interdicted. What the hell did he do?”

  “Look, calm down. I’ll head back to Ouranos, but it’s going to take me a few days. I can’t pull my squadron off its normal rotation. I’ll have to buy a ticket on a commercial vessel or hitch a ride on a military ship heading back to the capital. Don’t say anything until I get there.”

  “They want to see me in two days!”

  “Then hire a damn lawyer and stall them.”

  “That will make me look guilty,” Montgomery almost wailed.

  His rather slender reserves of patience having been exhausted, Boho snapped, “Probably because you are.”

  “Fuck you, Cullen! You better fix this. I’m not hanging alone!”

  The connection ended. Boho stared at his now darkened ring then picked up the elaborate gilt toilet-paper holder and smashed the mirror over the sinks. His features reflected back to him in a kaleidoscope of falling glass.

  “Cariño, are you all right? Are you hurt?” He heard Daphne’s bare feet slapping on the polished wood floor.

  “Fine, fine, but I fear I must leave.” He opened the door and stepped out. “I’m afraid I did break your mirror, however.”

  “Oh, Dios! How am I going to explain that to Donald?” She didn’t look as pretty when she was glaring at him.

  It was probably time to end the relationship. Which would sadly necessitate ending his relationship with her banker husband, but Boho was certain he could find another compliant but venal and seemingly respectable stooge to work on his behalf.

  He threw on his uniform and left. By the time he was partway down the hall she had gone from pleading to yelling imprecations at him. As the shrill cries pursued him Boho decided that the wealthy bourgeoisie probably weren’t the best place to find playmates. They didn’t seem to understand the rules. By and large the ladies of his own class knew how to stray without causing scenes, and the lower classes could always be cowed.