The Old Lady shook her head. “They’d devolved technologically,” she said. “There were barely five thousand of them left and the Commonwealth wasn’t so vigilant, then. Nivia’s underwriters hired the Family to remove the Minzoku and the colonial government destroyed archeological evidence of their existence. The most enduring was concentrated in what is now the Great Northern Preserve.”
“We just moved them to Beta,” Hal groaned.
“Not until a decade later,” the Old Lady explained. “We put the Minzoku to use elsewhere. Your great-grandfather extorted the colony when we needed a base of operation. The Minzoku still don’t know they’re on their own planet.”
“What was he thinking?” Hal wondered. “If the Minzoku can be linked to this planet—”
“The Commonwealth will spare no expense to crush us,” the Old Lady confirmed.
It was a little-known fact that the Commonwealth Colonization Board was created not to protect primitive alien races, but primitive human populations. The Terran Exodus had scattered human kind farther than the Commonwealth had yet expanded. Every few decades evidence of the migration emerged: dead ships orbiting inhospitable worlds, abandoned habitats, and other desperate, failed attempts to colonize environments inimical to life. Explorers occasionally found friendlier worlds already inhabited by the descendants of those who blindly fled the Qu’a’i fleet and pushed them aside by whatever means necessary to lay their own claim.
Many populations vanished without a trace. Others fought back, and the bloody massacres on Tammuz led to the creation of an oversight agency to prevent it from happening again. Since then the CCB had ordered the removal of colonies from two worlds usurped from their original inhabitants.
The Old Lady shook her head. “After all this time I never expected it to come to this. Transmit me the information the Nivians provided you about the spacers and initiate Stage One immediately. I’m afraid our presence on Nivia has become untenable whether we find these people or not, and the Minzoku’s existence has become too great a liability.”
“We can’t eliminate them all,” Hal pointed out.
“We don’t have to—just those that know about us.”
Her gaze became pointed. “All of them.”
Saint Anatone: 2709:10:01 Standard
The elevator doors closed on Maalan Bragg before he could maneuver himself, his briefcase and his cane into the hallway. They sighed open again when they detected the obstruction, allowing him almost enough time to collect himself before they threatened to catch him again.
Colonel Cai appeared at his side and blocked the doors with her forearm. “Let me help you with that, Maalan.”
“That’s not necessary!” Bragg protested as she plucked the briefcase from his hand.
“Nonsense; I can see that it is.” She walked alongside as he hobbled toward his office. “I’m surprised your doctor let you give up the wheelchair so soon.”
Bragg’s doctor had no inkling, of course. The deep ache in the left side of his chest had already convinced him that his impatience was foolish, but his coworkers would continue to defer to him, the wounded hero, as long as his infirmity was visible. He accepted their sympathy and accolades graciously, in public. Privately, he felt dirty. Decency demanded he resign but his courage hadn’t overcome Cai’s unveiled threat.
“I’m glad you’re recovering so quickly,” she said, following him into his office. Bragg settled into his chair with an involuntary sigh. “What did you have planned today?” she asked.
Bragg gestured irritably to the printouts stacked about the top of his desk. “Paperwork.”
“That can wait,” she said. “I’ve got a job for you.” She wrote an address on his blotter pad. “Have Dwin drive you.”
“What is it?” Bragg asked suspiciously.
“A situation requiring a discrete and rapid resolution,” she said. “Someone will fill you in when you get there. Your report won’t take more than a couple of hours.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Cai reached into her pocket and set a pair of major’s clusters on his desk. “You’ll need these,” she said. “I apologize for the informality.”
“Is this what I think it is?” Dwin asked as he drove through the ornate gate.
You already know, Bragg thought, but said: “Neil Sorenson’s estate.” A meticulously groomed hedge blocked the grounds from view. The drive made a gentle S curve and opened into a cul-de-sac full of unmarked vehicles. Two EPEA troopers stood at ease at the walkway leading to the mansion. Submachine guns suspended from three-point harnesses tracked the police car as Dwin pulled up.
“Ah, you want me to come in?” Dwin asked.
Bragg shook his head. Once he would have appreciated the backup. Now he operated under the assumption that Cai would allow no one outside her clandestine cabal near him for the foreseeable future. Therefore, he had no more to fear from the EPEA thugs than his own driver.
“You got an evidence kit?”
“Under the seat.”
Bragg rummaged through the kit and pocketed half a dozen evidence bags, a pair of sterile sample tubes, latex gloves and a fingerprint wand. He checked the chamber of his automatic before he opened the door and leaned on the cane to stand up. The EPEA trooper studied his ID carefully for a moment. “We’ve been expecting you, Major. This way.”
They led him through the hedge and turned onto a pathway rather than the steps leading to the main house. The grounds were artfully over-grown with native flora, a model of environmentally friendly landscaping. Half a dozen more EPEA personnel loitered outside the pool house, including one lieutenant. The ripe stench of decomposition wafted through the open door.
Bragg ignored the EPEA officer’s salute. “What have we got?”
“Neil and Philip Sorenson,” the EPEA officer said, following him in. “Both found in the pool, dead. No marks on the son. Father was shot in the head.”
The bodies lay at the edge of the pool already zipped into black plastic bags. Bragg stepped as close as he dared to the edge and peered into the murky, putrescent water. “I suppose you people have trampled the crime scene already?” Bragg asked.
“We’re here to sanitize it,” the lieutenant said emphatically, “not protect it.”
“Then I suggest you have someone get that glass off the bottom of the pool,” Bragg said. “What else did you pick up?”
The young officer looked flustered. “There was a deck chair here,” he said. “I moved it back to the table. And there was another glass, broken, over there.”
“What kind?”
“Sir?”
“What kind of glass! A kitchen glass or a bar glass like the one in the pool?”
“I don’t—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Bragg interrupted. “What are you calling this?”
“Poaching-related double homicide,” he ventured uncertainly.
“Oh, that’s original.” He pulled out a pair of evidence bags. “Put the glasses in these.”
“Sir, we threw the broken one in the garbage.”
“Then get it out!” Bragg exclaimed. “My God, it has to look like we at least tried!” He glanced about the pool house while the officer ordered one of the EPEA troops into the pool and another to dig the glass shards out of the garbage.
Nothing here they haven’t destroyed, Bragg thought. The glass in the pool had been submerged too long to recover any latent fingerprints or DNA. He needed to get into the main house without raising suspicions.
“Philip Sorenson was drunk,” Bragg told the lieutenant when he returned. “He fell in and drown. What did Neil Sorenson do when he found his son dead?”
“He killed himself,” the man answered.
“Good! Now you’re getting the idea. Where’s the gun?”
“The… gun?”
“Lieutenant, it’s difficult to make a case for suicide when means for it is absent,” Bragg sighed. “We need a gun. Did Sorenson have one?”
“There’s one i
n the study. I’ll have someone—”
“I’ll get it myself!” Bragg snapped. “Just point the way.”
Sorenson’s home lacked the grandiose accessories Bragg expected a man of his wealth to accumulate. Everything he owned was of the highest quality, but there were no gaudy paintings or statuary. The decor was expensive, but strictly conservative.
The study smelled strongly of whisky. Bragg found and bagged the pistol, then traced the source to an open bottle on the bar near a display case filled with vintage liquor. There was an empty ring on one shelf, and the remains of the seal lay next to the bottle.
The bottle was less than a quarter full. Sorenson might have cracked a bottle now and then, Bragg supposed, but a serious collector and connoisseur certainly wouldn’t leave it to evaporate. He cast a furtive glance at the door to the hallway, half expecting to find an EPEA watching. No one. He knew what he should do, which direction the wise course pointed. He didn’t have the power to oppose Cai, lacked the resources and knowledge necessary to effectively subvert her, but the thought of meekly acquiescing to the new order she’d thrust on him made him sick.
He’d betrayed his oath as a police officer once already, sacrificed Terson Reilly—dead though he may be—before the idol self preservation. By all appearances, Cai took that to mean that he considered himself irrevocably damned, and she would have been right, once. A few months earlier Maalan Bragg would have condemned anyone who stepped from the path of truth, who washed his hands in another man’s innocence, with no regard to circumstances.
Now, however, Bragg held fast to the conviction that, though he condemned himself, the person he’d wronged would not. Reilly, he was certain, might even approve, provided Bragg make an attempt to set things right, no matter how long it took.
Bragg sprayed graphite powder over the bottle. Fingerprints leapt out immediately; it hadn’t been handled more than once or twice since the last time it had been polished. He scanned each print with the wand, and then capped and wiped down the bottle but paused before returning it to the display case. He wasn’t likely to get a chance like this again on his salary—even as a major. He pulled off the cap again and took a straight slug. The liquor flowed down his throat with a smooth, even burn.
Fiction, he discovered, was easy to write; it took far less than the two hours Cai allotted to work up the report. His conclusions as to the causes of death—“accidental: alcohol related” and “suicide” met with Cai’s full approval.
She gave him the next two days off, and suggested that he and his wife pay another visit to Reproductive Services.
EPILOGUE
Beta Continent: 2709:10:03 Standard
Den Tun sat with his eyes closed on a bottom-polished stone bench beneath the shade of a patiently trained and manicured tree in his garden, listening to the lazy trickle of water against stone in the stream at his feet.
The tree was nearly as old as he was, not much more than a sapling when he planted it with his own hands decades ago. It had survived the whims of fate and circumstance as he had, passing from the careful tending of the young Minzoku gardener who first planted it for the pleasure of the Onjin whose garden this had been to the rough handling of those who saw it as nothing more than a prop.
Den Tun was pleased to find it still living, albeit shamefully neglected, when the garden came into his hands once again half a century later. The tree had gone its own way, as trees were wont to do when left unguided; the struggle to tame it again had been arduous, and Den Tun would never claim that it had been he who prevailed in the end. The tree was now pleasing in form and function, but any who cared to look could see the signs of its wild years.
Den Tun and the tree had compromised.
The quiet shuffle of feet drew Den Tun’s attention to his visitor, whose patience had finally lost out to the urgency of his news. General Cha’Cain bowed deeply in apology.
“The gaijin Sorenson is dead,” he announced with unusual bluntness. “Killed by the Onjin.”
“This is grave news,” Den Tun replied. “And the young gaijin who carried the Tiger Opal to him?”
“Lost to the wilderness.”
Den Tun closed his eyes again. The reversal of fortune was bitterly disappointing. Tree fronds rustled overhead; the tree cared nothing for those who guided it—left alone, it would slowly wake to its wild nature and continue on until confronted by something that mattered. Lack of water. Too little light.
“Eminance,” Cha’Cain asked urgently, “what shall we do?”
“We were in error to seek the assistance of gaijin,” Den Tun announced. “This is a matter of honor between Minzoku and Onjin. We must look to ourselves, revisit…old plans.”
“There was no honor in that,” Cha’Cain objected, shocked. “You put an end to it for that very reason!”
“The dishonor lay in the intent,” Den Tun replied. “The method… the method bears consideration.”
THE END
EMBUSTERO Anonce
Terson Reilly’s adventure continues in
EMBUSTERO
Coming in 2012
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About the Author
Scott Cleveland holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Eastern Washington University. Consequently his day jobs have included house painter, radar maintenance technician, and he is currently employed as a network management and cryptographic systems technician. He resides in Eastern Washington with his wife, Carol. Pale Boundaries is his first published novel.
How This Book Was Made
The files for this book were created on a PC. The pages were created in Microsoft Word, and the cover in Microsoft Powerpoint. PDF files were created with Adobe Acrobat Pro. The interior text font is 11-point Garamond with 14-point linespacing. The chapter title font is 24-point OCR-A II. The cover typeface is OCR-A II and Neuropol.
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by Scott Cleveland and licensors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced except in the case of brief quotations used for the purpose of critical articles or reviews.
Front cover art by Corey Ford
www.coreyfordgallery.com
Rear cover art by Kirill Alperovich
www.alperium.com
Images licensed via www.BigStockPhoto.com
Cover design and layout by Scott Cleveland
Interior design and layout by Scott Cleveland
ISBN-13: 978-1-449-99495-2
ISBN-10: 1-449-99495-4
Genre: Science Fiction
First Edition: January 2010
Second Edition: February 2010
Kindle Edition: February 2010
Printed in the United States of America
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