by Allen Wold
"I can lodge formal complaints too>" Darcy went on, "and I know that mis ship is monitored, and the tapes will be read when, we get to wherever we are going. I have a right, as a Federal citizen, to know where you are taking me and why."
Sukiro stopped smiling, though it seemed more'because of fatigue than anger. She took out the warrant card and handed it to Darcy, who just stared at it a moment. Sukiro smirked— without a reader, the card was useless.
But Darcy just went to the console next to the bridge hatch, touched a button that opened a panel, stuck the card in the slot, and read what it displayed on the screen. "It's the damndest thing," she said, turning to Rikard. "No charges at all, it just says that Nowarth is to turn us over to Sukiro, with all possessions. It mentions your seventy-five specifically. And it's authorized by the Federal Secretary of Internal Affairs."
"I guess Korijian's in trouble," Rikard said. He got up to read the warrant for himself, then looked back at Sukiro, who was smirking again. "Another interesting point," he went on. "This warrant is addressed to the Nowarth police and government, not to us. They have to give us to you, but nowhere does it say we have to go with you." Sukiro did not stop smirking. Rikard went to stand in front of her chair. "Unless you have another warrant," he said, "that specifically authorizes you to take us into custody, then I'll insist that you set us down on the nearest world. Other than Nowarth."
That didn't seem to faze Sukiro at all. Indeed, her smile got broader. "There's nothing I'd like to do better."
"I don't understand," Rikard said.
"Neither do I," Darcy said, coming to stand beside him, "and I don't like it. How about it, Sukiro, will you let us go?"
"If you insist," Sukiro said. "And then I can tell Colonel Polski that you refused to come."
"Leonid Polski?" Rikard asked.
But before Sukiro could answer, the jump alarm sounded. Rikard and Darcy hurriedly got back to their places on the couch and set the safety on.
"We can't be at the jump-slot yet," Darcy said as the mild stasis field clamped down on them.
"We're not," Sukiro said. "But we're far enough from No-warth to jump."
The dome overhead, showing stars, shimmered as the flicker drive came on and the first jump was made. The stars shifted their positions, held steady for half a second, then moved again, and again, as the flicker came up to full power. Now the stars, visible only in the microseconds between each jump, flowed past them, or seemed to, as the ship drove at what was effectively super-light speed.
"This will take a while," Sukiro said as she got out of her chair. At full power, there was no need for security fields. "We've got a long way to go, you might as well make yourselves comfortable."
"Did Polski send you?" Rikard asked as he turned off the safety on the couch.
"He did."
"What's it all about?" Darcy asked.
"You'll have to ask him."
"Come on," Darcy said, "I've known Leonid for a long time—"
She stopped at Sukiro's smirk, as if the agent had known that she and Polski had once been lovers.
"It's not like Polski," Rikard said in the embarrassed silence, "to throw his weight around like this. Why did he send for us?"
"He sent for you, Msr. Braeth. Not for Msr. Glemtide." Her words were intended to hurt.
"My name is on that warrant too," Darcy said.
"That's as may be, but it's Braeth he wants."
They waited for her to say more, but she just turned with a feigned nonchalance and started toward the bridge hatch.
"Why?" Rikard asked.
Sukiro, her hand not quite touching the latch plate, looked at him distastefully and sighed. "He's got this idea that you can help him with an investigation. I'm sorry, you'll have to ask him about that."
"But why me?"
Sukiro touched the latch, the hatch slid open. She stepped in, then turned to look back at them one more time. "That's what I keep asking myself," she said.
"So why," Darcy said, "did Leonid say he wanted Rikard, dammit?"
Sukiro was enjoying herself. "Because of his work with the Taarshome and the Belshpaer. And because the colonel seems to think Msr. Braeth can take care of himself, evidence of which seems lacking to me." Then her face got grim again, and she almost snarled, saying, "And because Braeth is not a cop."
That, it seemed, was what really rankled. Sukiro touched the inner plate and the hatch slid closed.
Part Two
1
Patrol craft are fast. A trip that would have taken a commercial liner ten days took Sukiro's courier only half that time. Which was, however, four and a half days too long as far as the people on board were concerned, cramped as they were into quarters that were meant for three but that had to accommodate five. The two crew were amiable enough but carefully kept a professional distance, and refused to say anything about their business. When not on the bridge they stayed in their tiny cabin as much as they could.
Sukiro's patent dislike for both Rikard and Darcy, even more than the crowding, was what made the trip so unpleasant, and unfortunately the three had to share the habitation deck, as did the crew for meals and exercise.
And that meant that Rikard and Darcy didn't have much opportunity to talk, except about trivialities. The ship was monitored, and anything they might say about the Reliquiture or the Leaves of Ba'Gashi could be legally used against them. And if the subject of their anticipated meeting with Leonid Polski came up, Sukiro was either cruelly taunting or angrily defensive. Rikard got the impression that she regarded the colonel as something of a hero—which in fact he was, of course.
The only incident of note occurred about two hours after the craft left the Nowarth system jump-slot. A signal came in from Polski's gunship—there are no private communication lines on a Patrol craft, so everybody heard the message and the first officer's response—telling Sukiro to go to someplace called Natimarie instead of Dorflyn, saying that Polski would meet them there. Sukiro acknowledged but did not offer the others an explanation.
Their arrival at the Natimarie system was anything but typical. Instead of slowing the drive during the last lightyear or so of travel they came in at full flicker, then went on inertials immediately after the last jump. From jump-slot to the main station took them just under ten standard hours, instead of the twenty-five or so usually required. Traffic control aboard the station wasn't too happy about this, but the Patrol craft came to a relative halt with plenty of clearance. They docked immediately, ahead of other ships that had arrived in a more sedate manner.
Sukiro did not stand upon ceremony but off-boarded Rikard and Darcy at once and towed their luggage floater herself. The boarding tube led them to a lobby filled with the average collection of passengers, most of them Human. They were met by a Federal officer in uniform, wearing a sergeant's stripes, who greeted Sukiro by name and took them through immigration without their having to pass inspection or present credentials.
Natimarie Station was no different from any of the others Rikard had been on during the last fifteen years or so, a bit smaller than some, perhaps, but organized in the same way. They were quickly led through the public areas to a private lounge that had apparently been appropriated for the use of Polski's crew because the only people at the bar and seated on the grouped couches wore the tan and black Federal police uniforms.
They went through the lounge to an inner room. There were only five other people here, seated, each after their own fashion, around a low table. Polski, flanked by a captain and a major, had his back to the door. The other two seated on the floor across the table from him were not Human, but centauroid Senola, the native sentients of Natimarie.
Polski turned as they entered. He looked tired, as if he had not slept much lately, and there was now a touch of gray in his hair. But his smile, when he saw who it was, was broad and genuine. Rikard grinned back.
"How you doing, kid?" Polski said as he got to his feet. He was as tall as Rikard, and hands
ome in the way Rikard had always wished he could be. He strode up and shook Rikard's hand as if he were truly glad to see him.
"Confused," Rikard said, "but otherwise okay."
"We've got a lot to talk about," Polski said, then turned to Darcy. It might have been Rikard's imagination, but he thought he detected a bit of reserve in Polski's smile for her, in his offered hand. "How are you, Darcy?" Polski asked. "It's been a long time."
"Two years," Darcy said. And though she smiled and shook his hand with vigor, there was something other than the joy of greeting going on in her mind.
After all, Darcy and Polski had been a lot more than just friends before Rikard had come along. She'd chosen to go with Rikard, but she was still fond of her old lover and sometime nemesis. They had been on opposite sides of the law several times, and only the fact that Polski had never caught her at her somewhat less than legal procurement of lost art objects had kept them from becoming enemies. There was still something between them. Rikard could see this in her face, though maybe Darcy wasn't aware of it herself.
"Delivered as ordered, Colonel," Sukiro said. Her tone was a touch too peremptory, too formal.
"Exactly as ordered," Polski said to her. "You got the gun, too?"
"Right here," Sukiro said with a negligent wave at the luggage floater. "I had to pull some strings. They wanted to destroy it."
Polski grinned at her as if he knew what strings she had pulled, and how she had pulled them. "I'll read your report as soon as I can," he told her. "Right now I want to fill you in on what's been going on."
He told the sergeant to put the luggage aboard his gunship, then introduced the newcomers to the other four people, who had been standing politely by their table. Captain Brenner was as tall as Rikard or Polski, but almost fragilely slender and very pale, as if born on a small world orbiting a dim star. Major Chiang was a handsome woman who exuded an aura of competency bettered only by .that of Polski himself. The two Senola were named Anavür, a police captain who was Polski's chief liaison on Natimarie, and Meshatham, a member of the Federal diplomatic corps who was serving as cultural interpreter.
The Senola had slender but deep-chested, horizontal lower bodies, and narrow upper torsos—the lungs being in the lower body. Their four legs were long and slender, though they stood no taller than an average Human. Their faces were narrow and long, with small batlike ears and very large purple, almost red eyes. Their arms were long enough to reach the ground when they stood, and their feet were doubly cloven hooves. Their skins were ivory colored, shading to ocher, hairless except for full manes of dark, rich brown hair.
Their clothes, though accommodating their centauroid form, were not otherwise exotically cut. Anavür wore a uniform of deep blue with white trim, and Meshatham's civilian jacket, shirt, and trousers were of a subtly patterned fabric in greens and browns, with just a touch of maroon for color. When they spoke, their voices were mellow and resonant, and their mouths showed lots of carnivorous teeth. They had no tails, and no distinguishing sexual characteristics, as far as Rikard could tell.
"All right," Polski said when greetings were finished, "we'd better get going."
"How bad is it?" Sukiro asked him as they left the inner lounge.
"About as bad as it could be, even though we got here before they finished the job. How they knew we were coming I don't know, but they were gone when we landed. They left an awful lot of survivors this time. I don't think they got through the whole area before they left."
There was no further discussion until they got to the privacy of a specially chartered station shuttle. Most of the seats were for Humans, but a quarter of the spaces had been reworked to accommodate the Senola, who had no space technology of their own, and who depended on Federation services for interplanetary trade and transport.
Rikard threw himself into a chair, slunched down, crossed his long legs, and looked Polski square in the eye. "So what the hell is going on?" he said.
"That's what we're trying to find out. About a standard year ago somebody raided a small town on Gentian. Ninety percent of the population, just under ten thousand people, wound up missing, the rest dead, except for five or six survivors who were totally mindless. Since then about forty other worlds have been similarly hit—always small towns, isolated from the rest of their society. That's almost the only pattern there is."
Rikard could only sit and stare at the grim faces around him. At least, he assumed that the Senola faces were grim, too.
It was Darcy who broke the silence. "How many people are we talking about?" she asked.
"Half a million so far," Polski said. "Not as many as died at Banatree, but that was a single incident. What makes this so bad is that we never know who's going to be hit next—and they're being hit, Darcy, every ten to fifteen standard days."
"And they just kidnap ten thousand people at a time," Rikard said.
"It's worse than that," Polski told him. "We don't know the numbers for sure, but we have reason to believe that they're killing about half the people before they take them away. I have no idea what they want with the bodies. They take out their brains, and the major nervous systems. We discovered that only recently."
"You don't mean that literally," Rikard interjected.
"I do. We haven't found any of the nervous material, but we have found a few bodies with empty skulls and spinal columns."
"But what the hell do they do with it?" Darcy asked.
"We have no idea. We've been collecting data like crazy, but none of it makes much sense, either about that or about how they move around and choose targets. A raid can occur almost anywhere, first this side of the Federation, then the other, then right next door, then somewhere else. There seems to be no preference as to the species of the victims, almost every race in the Federation has been 'collected' at one time or another. There is some indication that the raiders are comprised of more than one species, but which species we have no idea. We don't know anything about the weapons they use, how they subdue the population, what kind of ship or ships they have, or any idea where they might be coming from. Or what their motives might be."
"Is this why you sprang us?" Rikard asked incredulously, "Good God, Leonid, what the hell do you think / can do?"
"These raiders are working out of some kind of base," Major Chiang said. She glanced at Polski, who leaned back to let her talk. "They're not just marching across the Federation from one side to the other," she went on. "We don't know where their base is yet, but we've got our analysts working on it, and as soon as we have an idea, we'd like you to go in and penetrate it."
"Now wait just a minute," Rikard started to say.
"Take it easy, kid," Polski said. "Wait until you hear the whole story. I know you have other business, and I'm not going to force you into anything. But at least give me the chance to try to persuade you."
"... All right, tell me about it."
"It all depends on our getting some kind of clue as to where their base might be. All we can be sure of at the moment is that it is within the Federation somewhere, and that it has to be able to keep them in supplies, energy, and enough material to launch all these raids, and have some kind of depot where they can keep their victims, assuming they don't just toss them out a lock somewhere in deep space."
"You'd need at least a good-sized city for that," Darcy said, "and that means an inhabited planet. But how could these raiders work out of any Federation world without people knowing about them?"
"They've been able to get on and off forty worlds without being detected," Major Chiang said. "At least so Jar. We'll find out more when we get downstairs. And if they can do that, they're using ships like Patrol craft, or special couriers—"
"Which means they had a lot of money and power to begin with," Captain Brenner put in.
"—and that means," Chiang went on, "that if they're careful, as obviously they have been so far, their base planet may have no idea that they're even there, let alone what they're up to."
And that, Rikard realized, was part, at least, of what was bothering Sukiro. "Why don't you use her?" he asked, jerking a thumb in her direction.
"It wouldn't work," Polski said. Sukiro turned a stony face away. "Police think and act too much like police, even under cover. We're all wired, and that can be detected, and if it is you've got a dead cop. And if we did send someone like Sukiro in under cover, we'd have to work for maybe a year to provide a good background. You can't have somebody just pop up out of nowhere, they'd be blocked out or killed as soon as they said 'Hello.'"
"But I'm different," Rikard said quietly.
"Exactly."
"But I'm known."
"You are. But not just because of all that publicity on Sel-tique. You may not be aware of it, kid, but you've got a reputation for doing certain kinds of things that no good cop would tolerate—well, professionally, at least. You're a Gesta, and as such you could have any number of motives for being anywhere you wanted to be, any time, without any background other than what you take with you. You can just walk in without explanations and nobody will question that—except the local police, of course."
"Don't give me more credit than I deserve," Rikard said. "Darcy's the clever one, you should ask her, not me."
"Not on your life," Darcy said.
"You could do it," Polski told her. "But the kid's got one advantage that makes him the ideal choice."
"His gun."
"Exactly."
"I've been wondering about that," Sukiro said. "Seventy-fives aren't all that common, but I could have gotten him another one out of the Black Room. What's so special about this one?"
Rikard looked down at the scar on the palm of his right hand. "I'm wired for it," he said, then looked up at Sukiro. "When I hold it, with my glove on, it gives me a built-in self-correcting heads-up range-finder, and speeds up my perceptions by about a factor often."