by Scott Moon
A very genuine and understated smile broke the young Pierre's face. "I paint pictures of mountains. This job pays the bills, sort of.”
Thaddeus was pretty sure this didn't clarify anything for Ummak.
“Ummak want job. Want to sweep."
Pierre shook his head. "The floor is already clean. I sweep it three times a day myself.”
Ummak went onto his tiptoes and dropped back to his heels several times in an odd rhythm. He tried to say something in Galactic Common, became frustrated, then muttered a long string of Unglok words.
Pierre spread his hands in what he probably thought was the universal body language for “I can’t help you, friend.”
Ummak backed away from the bar, looked around, and then stepped forward to resume the conversation. He was breathing heavier than Thaddeus thought possible. Mast had never gulped so much air even after one of their workouts. And his deputy was not exactly a natural athlete.
Thaddeus stepped forward and placed one hand on Ummak’s shoulder. This wasn't exactly polite in their culture. His instinct told him to do it so he did. "Relax, buddy. Let me buy you a drink. There will be plenty of time for sweeping later.”
Ummak nodded almost violently and lowered himself onto one of the barstools.
"What do they even drink?" the young Pierre asked.
The Unglok looked up at the word ‘drink,’ but then down at his hands.
"Why don't you start with water or some fruit juice," Thaddeus said to Pierre. He sat quietly listening to his new friend mutter a mixture of Galactic and Ungwiloook.
“Ummak should no finance with ShadEcon.”
Thaddeus held his questions until he had listened to Ummak for a while. He wanted to ask about the Unglok’s shady loan but didn’t know enough of the language.
"Must pay. Must make the Tigi. Broken legs. Ummak can't muchly have broken legs." Ummak lowered his forehead to his hands on the bar and trembled head to toe.
Mast arrived without warning or fanfare. He almost seemed to be whistling, but the melody was atonal and random. He sat down at his usual barstool like a kid in a candy shop.
The young Pierre turned around and Mast’s expression fell.
Ummak arose from his misery and stared at Mast as though he had seen some kind of Ungwilook unicorn. A heartbeat later, he started rambling excitedly. Mast waved his hands in the local expression of denial.
"You like Tigi!”
“No Tigi for me! Mast Jotham has never had Tigi in Darklanding!” Mast said.
The Ungloks argued back and forth in their language for several minutes.
“Unmak smell Tigi from your pores. And smell bad sickness. Tigi not good for sickness.”
Mast protested with thick, consonant cluster-words and gesticulated as he spoke.
“What was all that about?” Thad asked.
“Ummak borrowed money to start an Unglok saloon. Watering hole, he said. His Ungwilook is nearly as bad as his Galactic Common. I think he may be senile. Muchly ignore him.”
“And what else? There was something about Dixie in that conversation. Is this guy part of the group that ambushed us and Shaunte?”
"No. Ummak and his friends have nothing to do with ShadEcon. They are just fools for borrowing money from bad people," Mast said. "He gathered his friends around Miss Dixie to ask about buying peaches to make a drink for his watering hole. He was muchly supposed to get a job sweeping from Pierre, who would then set up a secret meeting.”
Thaddeus burst out laughing, and it took him a moment to regain his composure. He explained the joke to Mast as he slid his empty glass to the young Pierre.
"The temporary bartender is also called Pierre," Thaddeus said.
Mast stared at him in confusion. "How can there be more than one Pierre? Is there more than one Thaddeus Fry?”
Thaddeus shook his head, sighing from a very satisfying laugh. "We recycle names. You'll get used to it.”
"I do not think that I will.”
Thad laughed again, wondering what Dixie thought about the locals asking her for her peaches. It felt good, even with all that had happened since he became the sheriff. "Can Ummak help us find Trankot’s killers or take us to the ShadEcon headquarters? He muttered something about taking out a ShadEcon loan,” Thad asked.
“No. And he will not admit that he has, but he is muchly lying,” Mast said.
Thad waved at Pierre until he walked closer. “Give Ummak a job and tell the real Pierre this old guy needs to talk to him about business.
Pierre shrugged like he didn’t care and wasn’t enthusiastic about much of anything. “Okay. Whatever.”
CHAPTER TEN: Primary Suspects
Mast took Thaddeus by the arm and drew him away from Ummak. “I have much to tell you. I went to have my stitches fixed. And while I was there, I saw Kandor and the women of her family. Don't judge me muchly, but I followed them into the market. Do you know what happened then? No, you would not know. Not yet. I ran into Andronik, who took me to a Chok, which is an Unglok meeting of local ShadEcon officers.”
Thaddeus wanted to interrupt for clarification, but his friend’s excitement was fun to watch, even if his narrative was a bit confusing. He held his questions for fear of disrupting his partner’s memory of events. There would be time for sorting details.
“Andronik led me along building walkways and over rooftops until we were able to spy on the Chok. It was very dangerous. I saw Kandor receive items that had been stolen from her. The ShadEcon officer said they tracked down the thieves and punished them," Mast said.
“Could you identify any of the Ungloks you saw at the secret meeting?”
“Yes, I believe I could. They were not special to look at. I have been searching the SagCon databases for their identities as you suggested.”
"I remember Andronik. He's that kid who brings water to the exercise yard sometimes.”
“Yes. That is the boy who wishes to be the Sheriff of Darklanding when he grows up,” Mast said. “Or maybe a burglar. He is too young to know his path.”
“We need to work on your reporting style, but good work," Thaddeus said. "So let's go over what we know now. Ungloks don't use banks and keep a lot of their material wealth hidden in their homes. Trankot and his family were victims of a robbery. Somehow, he was killed. Do we know if that occurred during the robbery? Did the thieves kill him or did someone from ShadEcon do it? I get the impression that he was an abusive husband and father, and no one liked him. It also seems, from something his wife said, that he wasn't as rich as he claimed to be and probably owed ShadEcon more money than he could pay back.”
“The ShadEcon officers did not return all of the family’s wealth, only about ten percent, which is still a considerable sum," Mast said.
"Sounds like they owed ninety percent," Thaddeus said.
"I heard them say she owed six hundred and ninety percent, but this may have been a joke or a threat. She has six daughters. In the formal version of our language, this might have meant that her daughters would be given to husbands that the ShadEcon officers chose.”
"Or sold into slavery. Maybe sent to work in a brothel?"
“That would be very rare in our culture.” Mast looked almost sick as he thought about it.
“Mast, what do you think of this place? The Mother Lode, I mean.”
"It is not an Unglok place.”
The conversation faltered. Thaddeus went back to reviewing the case in his head. "I need to talk to these ShadEcon officers.”
"That will be very difficult. They move the Chok often. Andronik claims he can find where they will be meeting next.”
"I always said he was a good kid," Thaddeus said.
"I do not muchly remember you saying that."
“Were there humans at the Chok?”
Mast nodded. “Only one. I searched for the four men who attacked me, but only saw one. He could have been in the group that attacked me. My memory of the incident has holes. Badly blurry.”
***
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The boy Andronik was sitting on the porch of the Mother Lode, flirting with three of the girls on their smoke break, when Thaddeus and Mast stepped out.
"You're so cute," a curly, blonde woman named Leslie Stargazer said.
"I am cute! You should take me home," Andronik said, slouching to appear shorter than the woman. He was as tall as any of the women here despite his age. "You have the most beautiful blonde hair in the entire galaxy."
She laughed. "What would I do with a little street rat Glok? But you are cute."
Thaddeus grabbed the kid by the collar and dragged him onto the street. "That's enough of that, Andronik. We've got work to do."
“Bye-bye, Adro!” Leslie and the other girls yelled as they waved and laughed.
"I was doing research, Sheriff. The only people in Darklanding who know more than I do are Dixie's girls," Andronik said. "Hey, I get it. Stop dragging me. We need to be stealthy."
Thaddeus let him go, then faced him with his hands on his hips. "I'm not worried about you or Dixie's girls. I'm worried about drunk miners getting the wrong idea about what you're up to at the saloon and pounding your face in.”
Andronik's eyes went wide.
"Yeah, that's right. You could get hurt poking around where you don't need to poke around." Thad considered what to say next. "You speak better Galactic Common than Mast does."
"But I try muchly harder," Mast said.
Thaddeus looked up and down the street. "I need to talk to a representative of ShadEcon. An officer or someone equally important."
"That will be difficult. No one has ever talked to the Unglok representative for ShadEcon. Not without an invitation."
Thaddeus smiled broadly. "I think you can take me to their hideout, wherever it is, and now would be a good time."
“Okay, Sheriff. But you have to deputize me,” Andronik said.
“Says who?”
“Says the movies. And I get a badge so if I shoot anyone, I don’t get hanged.”
“When this is done, I need to review your watch list for BS cowboy dramas. Don’t you go to school?”
“What is school?” Mast and Andronik asked simultaneously.
“A place to suffer. If you don’t want to suffer, kid, show me where the ShadEcon Chok is today.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN: ShadEcon
Andronik led Thaddeus and Mast through a warren of alleyways the sheriff hadn’t known existed. After the first dozen twists and turns, Thaddeus realized this was a settlement that had been here long before SagCon surveyors arrived. The buildings were made from local materials, bricks of various sizes and shapes as well as rocks held in place with red or tan mortar. The roofing of each building looked like chipped slate or something similar.
None of the streets were on a grid pattern but followed natural terrain…which tended to lead downward. He began to feel as though the town had been built into an ancient surface mine near the edge of the mesa. Whenever he could see past the closely-packed buildings, he attempted to confirm his theory.
"How did I not know about this place?"
Mast pointed at him. "You did not complete the SagCon orientation.”
"Nope. They pretty much just dumped me at the spaceport. I had to find my own way to the Mother Lode,” Thad said as he remembered the scene. Compared to all that had happened since then, it seemed like a fond memory.
Andronik led them to a tunnel covered with a large metal grate. "This is hard to move without making noise. This tunnel is where we need to go.”
"Just making sure you're still taking us to the Chok,” Thad said.
Andronik shook his head vigorously. "This is where they go before the Chok. The Chok changes every time, but they always meet here first. It is very dangerous now. You should deputize me and hand over my badge and gun."
Thaddeus ignored him. He wiggled the gate open and slipped through. The three of them waited until their eyes adjusted to the gloom. "I'll go first. At least until we come to an intersection or something."
The brick walls and ancient mortar made the place feel like a tomb rather than a drainage tunnel. He wasn't sure where rain runoff was supposed to go on a mesa this large, but he imagined it shooting out of the side in a great waterfall of city waste. He called Andronik forward at each intersection and counted how many times he turned left or right. Subterranean navigation was not his specialty. He knew how to do it and how dangerous it was. Neither Mast nor Andronik appeared to be worried about getting lost.
"This is it. They might be waiting for us. Mast is very noisy,” Andronik said.
Thad’s deputy didn't argue.
They stepped into a large junction of tunnels that felt like an old cathedral or underground mausoleum. Indirect light from ventilation shafts high above them stabbed down in hazy dust motes. Thaddeus looked at the crowd of Ungloks and smaller contingent of humans gathered in the hideout.
“I said I wanted to talk to a ShadEcon officer, not their entire gang,” Thaddeus said.
Thaddeus recognized the man who had fired the net cannon at him during his encounter with the mercs. Surprising, since he didn't remember seeing the man's face and wouldn't have observed him on the building top. At some point during their street fight, the short, stocky man had made an impression on him. Thaddeus recognized the second human in the group as the leader who had done all the talking. All four of the men stood near an Unglok who sat on a large chair resembling a throne.
"Mast, do you recognize those four men?”
"I do. I will not muchly forget them. My memory holes are full of their faces.”
Taking a deep breath as he reminded himself there was nothing to do about the situation other than continue, he put a hand on Andronik’s shoulder. "Stay back in the shadows of the tunnel. I may need you later."
"Okay, Sheriff.”
"Mast, let's go on down there and do our thing.”
"Our thing? I am wondering if it will be our last thing, whatever that may be. I am most discomfortable, Sheriff Thaddeus Fry."
Thad smiled. He took in the details of the room and did a rough count of armed individuals, while keeping most of his attention on the leader of the human foursome. The situation was dangerous and full of unknowns. The human mercenary who had called him ‘Captain’ was the biggest single threat he could see. A blaster hung from each of the man’s hips.
"If it makes you feel better, I do not think the Ungloks muchly like or trust the human soldiers of fortune,” Mast said.
“I'm sure you're right." Thaddeus took one last look at the man and decided he was a lean veteran who had probably seen about the same amount of action the Fry-man had. Reluctantly, he turned his attention to the Unglok on the oversized chair.
The Unglok wore bracelets up to his elbow of gold, silver, and other precious metals. His long shirt at first resembled a robe but parted to reveal flowing pants of a shimmering fabric. The shoes seemed like leather covered with gold and silver studs. His belt was so wide, it almost looked like a piece of armor.
“I am Askoak. In your crude galactic language, you would call me the boss,” the finely dressed Unglok said.
Thaddeus feigned confusion. "You have a very thick accent. Not that I'm criticizing how you speak our language. I mean…I can't speak yours at all.”
Mast whispered harshly, “You are getting better. Don't be so hard on yourself. You muchly must show confidence when speaking to an elder of Askoak’s status.”
Thaddeus ignored Mast. "I can't quite catch your name. Can you say it again?”
"I am Askoak, the Chok Master.”
Thaddeus shook his head in pretended frustration. He bungled the name several times. "Ass-coke, ass-cock, maybe I should just call you Ass Hat?”
Askoak stared at him. The crowd of Ungloks remained as silent as statues. The only sound in the room was water dripping in one of the nearby tunnels.
"That is fine. You can call me Ass Hat. It is a title of honor among your people, yes?"
“Sure. I recommend that y
ou use it during all of your introductions to humans," Thaddeus said.
"Why are you stalling?" Mast whispered.
"Because there are a lot of bad guys in here and I don't know what we got ourselves into,” Thad said out of the corner of his mouth. He addressed Askoak. “My deputy and I are investigating a murder. We thought a pillar of the Unglok community such as yourself would want to assist us.”
"I am not responsible for the death of Trankot,” Askoak said.
"Well, that's good. I hadn't really got around to accusing you of anything. Thanks for getting straight to it."
A murmur rippled through the crowd. Thaddeus checked on the Four Horsemen. They hadn’t moved but looked ready. He’d seen military special operators stand like that, ready to kill or take a nap with equal ease.
“There are those among us who find human jokes amusing,” Askoak said. “I am not one of them.”
Thaddeus flinched. Maybe the Ass Hat prank was too much. “I am serious as a heart attack. This is a murder investigation. All evidence points to the involvement of ShadEcon.”
“ShadEcon? Now you are surely joking. That is a human company.”
Thaddeus gestured to the human enforcers.
Askoak flicked away the implication with his fingertips. “Enough. I will help you, but you must help me.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from the Ungwilook Mafia,” Thad said.
Several Ungloks leaned close to Askoak to argue and gesticulate. Askoak listened, then ordered them to silence with harsh words in his language. He leaned forward as he chastised Thad. “What do you mean by mafia? The way you say it sounds like an insult. My advisors agree. Some of them say that Ass Hat is an insult.”
Thaddeus spread his hands and smiled. “It really just depends on your point of view. Let’s make a deal. I need to solve a crime. You need...a new tailor?”
“That is almost funny. These are the best robes money, real money, not SagCon credits, can buy. Fit for royalty or Tigi merchants,” Askoak said. “I will tell you who killed Trankot and deliver him to you if your deputy will reveal the secrets of his vision quest. You will forget my association with the human ShadEcon.”