On Assignment to the Planet of the Exalted

by Helena Puumala

  Yes, the elite Torrones troops that Mikal had called for would send the Vultairians, including the bodyguards of the Exalted, scurrying, the moment they landed. No wonder the Forest Spirit was panicking. She would have to try to ease its—and the Ocean Sister’s—fears.

  “Not now,” subvocalized The Monk. “Let the Spirits gather the Klensers into the Capital City. As your friend, Roxanna deduced, their presence there can be a formidable motivator to keep the Four Hundred from doing something really stupid. Besides, Mikal is right about the touchy situation within the rock beneath us. And the Torrones wouldn’t do much good here; they are much too blunt an instrument.”

  “Fine, I’ll wait,” Kati subvocalized back peevishly. After the incident with Berd Warrion, it was hard to accept gracefully that the old reprobate could, and sometimes did, make sense.

  *****

  Mikal and Malin had arrived at about mid-morning, carefully landing their flit next to the flyer behind the old orchard. They had used the com link which connected Kelt’s vehicles, to announce their presence while still high in the air. Malin had been the one to talk to Rakil who had had the watch, while the others had tried to get some rest. The flit had appeared on the flyer’s tracking screen slightly before the machine had identified it as a sister-ship, and there had been a few tense moments, while Rakil had wondered whether he was looking at an image of a friend or a foe. But the Margolises had behaved true to form, apparently sleeping in at their coastal resort, rather than getting up in the morning to check out the new arrivals hiding in the Old Keep. The arriving flit had activated the Carmaks Family signal in the flyer, and moments later a voice had broken through, asking if Kati’s Investigative Team was present.

  “This is Rakil of Borhq, of the Federation Unofficial Investigative Team on Vultaire, speaking,” Rakil had answered. “Who am I talking to?”

  “This is Malin of Paradiso, at the controls of a flit belonging to Kelt Carmaks. I have with me Mikal r’ma Trodden of Lamania. He tells me that you, Rakil of Borhq, are his cousin.”

  “Damn right,” Rakil had said. “Get yourselves down here. We could use a little help in rescuing those women in the keep. Not to mention trying to preserve evidence of an illegal drug lab that’s producing a substance used by slave-traders.”

  “Yeah, we have a pretty good picture of what’s happening down there. Xoraya and Kati routed word to us through Master Healer Vorlund. We’ll be there, pronto, and then we can formulate a plan.”

  Rakil had barely had time to roust up the sleeping members of the Team when the flit had come to ground, beside the flyer—and nicely in the shadow of gnarled fruit trees. When Kati had watched Mikal emerge from it her heart had skipped a beat, and she had asked her Monk to calculate whether she and Mikal had been apart the required half-a-Lamanian year. Apparently so, just barely—but there were lots of things to do before they’d have the chance for anything more than shared grins, and maybe a quick peck on the cheek.

  When Mikal had informed the Team that he had asked for a Torrones Warship to lay siege to the Capital City, Kati had insisted that the Rebels at the Underground Base had to be informed.

  “They are really good people,” she had said to Mikal. “They hide escaped, and Wild Klensers from the Exalted, and Roxanna from Gorsh’s ship is hiding there. She and Ingrid were sold to a Vultairian brothel-keeper in the Capital City. Some of the Ordinary Citizen workers helped her to escape to the Base—they would have helped Ingrid, too, but she refused to leave because she’s nurturing a quartet of little green-skinned girls, and she could not have taken them with her.”

  “Green-skinned girls? Four of them?” Malin had blanched. “That sounds like a quatrad of Grenies of Paradiso! How in all the gods’ names...?”

  “Malin, we can’t deal with that right now,” Mikal had interrupted. “But rest assured that we will later. Kati, you have a way to get hold of the people at this Underground Base? They have a com that you can access without alerting the Oligarchs?”

  “I had thought to go through the Ocean Sister and the Forest Spirit, and contact one of the Klensers; they are attuned to the Planetary Essences,” Kati had answered. “But if you have a safe communicator—Lank, you have the co-ordinates for the one you cleaned of bugs at the Base.”

  Mikal had brought out his communicator and Lank had set the co-ordinates. And Kati had talked to Roxanna.

  *****

  “So we have the flyer scanning the skies for flying vehicles, and Kati’s Granda node and non-corporeal local friends watching for anyone arriving by land transport or on foot,” Mikal said as the seven co-conspirators settled down under a gnarly tree which sported a few misshapen fruit—Kati had no idea what they were—for a strategy session.

  It was good to get out of the flyer which was a trifle small for five men and two women to lounge in comfortably, and the weather outdoors was late summer lovely. Jock glared at the misshapen fruit as he sat down cross-legged on the springy ground.

  “That Margolis Family is useless,” he said savagely. “They’ve let a fortune go to waste by not looking after this orchard. These are nardo trees, and the fruit can be used to make a whole selection of delicious and healthful preserves—not to mention a lovely wine. But the trees need care, and have to be pruned, or they grow out of control and quit producing, except for the sort of sad seedpods that you see above you. If this place was part of Ithcar, I’d bring in an arborist, and a handful of workers, and we’d have this place earning money in a few years!”

  “And instead of a mind-tangler lab in The Keep basement, you’d put in a kitchen to cook up all those preserves, and maybe a winery to produce the wine,” Joaley added. “Hey, you could make this a people-friendly place again!”

  “Granda tells me that the Ocean Sister loves those ideas,” Kati said. “Take them to the new government that you’ll want to install in the Capital City when this is all over, and you can count on the good will of the Planet’s Spirits, Jock.”

  “Though there’s still a bit of work to be done before we get that far,” Jock replied, but now he was grinning.

  “To that end,” said Mikal, “let us review what we know about what’s going on in the depths of that building on the other side of the nardo trees.”

  He lifted up a finger.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong. One: only one level of The Keep, as I gather this place is called, is presently in use, and it’s the second lowest level, with two other empty underground levels above it. Two: the only way down there is the central staircase, which is located in the foyer which also houses a useless elevator shaft, the elevator being broken, and on the bottom floor. Three: there are a total of nine functioning human beings down there, three members of the Margolis Family and six off-worlders suspected of being slaves. The six are working in the laboratory down there, and stay within the confines of it and the associated living facilities. Four: Xoraya and Canna are being kept comatose in a small bedroom off the foyer, and the Margolises are in the room next to it, which apparently is a lounge well-stocked with food and drink.”

  No-one interrupted him; apparently the information transfer that Xoraya and Kati had facilitated had worked well. Mikal and Malin had a good grasp of the situation.

  “Well, Kati,” Mikal said, grinning, when he had finished with the statement of facts. “Got any wild ideas as to how we should deal with this? You were pretty good at coming up with those on the Drowned Planet.”

  “You must be joking,” sniffed Joaley. “She’s been turning down my ideas for months now! Me, I’d call her Lady Caution!”

  “Yeah, well, Joaley, you’ve needed a bit of being held back,” Lank laughed. “Our favourite red-head’s pretty quick to rush into things.”

  “What we need to do, as we figured out earlier, is to stun all three of the Margolis Exalted before any of them can call for their goons on the other side of the island,” Jock said. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “Do you know what kind of calling system they use to alert
their bodyguards?” Mikal asked him.

  “It’s something they’ve bought off-world,” Jock said. “The system that I’ve seen uses a small transmitter attached to one wrist. The emergency button can be activated by the fingers of either hand.”

  He demonstrated on his own wrist; the long Vultairian fingers reached easily to the indicated spot, even with the hand which held the transmitter.

  “Hm, that’s a pretty common set-up, although the newer systems have the look of a dab of paint on the skin. Not that anyone would have sold anything like that to the Vultairians—as far as I know, the smear is only available to the Federation Government, right now. But the button transmitters are just as effective, even the oldest models. So, unless we stun all three of them at once or from behind, there’s a very good chance that at least one of them can make the call for help.”

  “And that call will bring in a contingent of goons in the time it takes to fly here from the Margolis Residence,” added Rakil. “It’s a short flight.”

  “We’ll be hauling two comatose bodies up three flights of stairs, even if we leave someone up here to move the flit and the flyer next to the Keep’s entrance,” Mikal said, apparently calculating the odds. “How quick are the goons at responding to call like that? Do you know, Jock?”

  “To an emergency call from an Exalted? Very quick,” Jock replied. “Responding to such calls is one of their prime functions, after all. There’s always a unit, usually of a half-a-dozen bodyguards, but sometimes as many as twelve of them, ready to act at a moment’s notice. The Exalted do have a tendency to get themselves into trouble, you see.”

  He grinned mirthlessly while delivering the last sentence.

  “Would it be possible to use—ahem—feminine wiles on them?” Kati asked, looking around her. “Anybody know anything about the Margolises’ sexual preferences?”

  “You mean, are they keen on practises like those of the Desotes?” Jock asked her thoughtfully. “Or users of Malaudins’ services?”

  “The Margolis jerks were some of the Vultairians who would come down to The Second City and request the services of Lamanian Comforters,” Joaley said acidly. “Then they’d treat them like dirt. When I was a City Peace Officer, we often got emergency calls from young women and men who had answered such requests, and found themselves in difficult situations. My Boss asked the Social Services not to respond to calls from Vultairians, because so often they ended badly, but they said that they couldn’t make any blanket rules, because there were a few exiles from Vultaire in The Second City who occasionally requested Comforters and treated them very well. Besides, not all the Vultairian diplomats down from the Space Station were turds, all of the time.”

  “Lamania is famous for fairness—deservedly,” Mikal said with a sigh. “But the Comforters do have it tough with some non-Lamanians. One reason why everyone who wants to work for Social Services has to do a stint Comforting. Valuable lessons abound there, apparently.

  “But, I’m guessing that where you’re going with this, Kati, is....”

  “That Joaley and I could pretend to be off-world courtesans, brought in to serve the needs of the laboratory workers. They are all male, if I have the information from Xoraya correct. The Margolis trio have been doing a lot of drinking, and very little sleeping, so they should not be at their most alert, although they don’t have to be very alert to press those little transmitter buttons. But if each of us can distract one of the three, the rest of you only need to stun the third fellow before he has the chance to reach for his emergency caller. It ups the odds, right?”

  “Jeez, Kati,” Joaley groaned. “Are you suggesting that I have to let one of those Exalted jerks paw me? The thought makes me want to throw up!”

  “It’s for a good cause, kiddo,” Kati said coolly. “It won’t kill you, and may keep all of us alive. To say nothing of Xoraya and Canna.”

  “I’m feeling your pain,” Mikal said to Joaley. “Can’t say that I much like the idea of watching Kati play the sultry siren to a drunk Margolis.” He sighed again. “But I have to admit that her idea holds more promise than anything I’ve come up with so far, and if you’re half as good an actress as she is, Joaley, you two can pull it off. And you’re a trained Peace Officer so you should have no trouble dealing with your chosen mangler, once you’ve got his hands pinned.”

  “I’ll knee him in the crotch,” Joaley snapped.

  “You won’t have to because he’ll get stunned before that,” Malin promised, with a sudden grin. “It’ll be a pleasure to deal a headache to at least one of those guys after chasing them all the way here.”

  “So you’re not going to argue with me?” Kati’s grin was broad.

  “Only if someone has a better plan than yours,” Mikal answered, trying not to devour her delighted face with his eyes. “And if someone has, let’s hear it.”

  No-one said anything until Joaley spoke again.

  “There’s a possibility that one of those jerks will remember me from The Second City. I have had to give a few warnings to Vultairian diplomats from the Space Station. It’s perfectly possible that one or more of these Margolises were among them. Plus they may well remember you, Kati, from the VidFeeds on Lamania. Your story was rather well publicized as I recall. Have you got a contingency plan for that eventuality?”

  “The Monk says that my identity is not a problem,” Kati replied. “Of course, an Adventuress would be engaging in prostitution, according to a Vultairian Oligarch. And as you on my Team know, I’ve been encouraging them to see me that way.”

  There were laughs from the male members of the Troupe.

  “And as for you, Joaley, if the issue comes up, you’ll just have to declaim loudly how bored you were among all the goody-two-shoes on Lamania, and were so pleased to meet up with that interesting Kati of Terra, who, amazingly enough, was willing to let you join her on her jaunt across the Galaxy. The Granda figures that it’ll do the trick.”

  Jock howled.

  “This’ll work,” he said. “Take it from one who lived among the Exalted as, more or less, one of them, in the Capital City, for several years. Once they have a slot in which to shove someone they deem a lesser creature, they use it and quit thinking.”

  “Okay, let’s collect some stunners and put Kati’s plan into action,” Mikal suggested. “Will the two of you ladies have been among the Lab workers all along or did you just recently arrive on the island?”

  “Give me a moment, and I’ll check with Xoraya, to see which would be more believable,” said Kati, settling back into a seated position and closing her eyes.

  The others waited in silence until she opened her eyes again.

  “We better have just arrived, in response to complaints from the workers,” she said. “Xoraya thinks that it’s not implausible that somebody at the main residence would have procured a couple of whores for the slaves working the Lab. They apparently have been quite full of noisy complaints the whole time she has been here, and angry that they have very few amusements outside of their work, and no way to go anywhere. They aren’t usually locked up, except when there are Margolises in The Keep, like right now. There’s just nowhere for them to go, and the only interesting activity is to run the Lab.”

  “So there are no guards around because there’s really no need to guard them,” Lank said. “Although, mind you, if I was one of them, I’d leave and build a raft—or something. No way I’d stay down there like a tame hound.”

  “That’s why you’re on this Team,” Kati observed with a grin. “But people differ; it’s a good idea to remember that. Probably these guys figured that they had found heaven when Xanthus Hsiss hired them to help him with his project. They had no idea that things could go this badly wrong.”

  *****

  Kati and Joaley did not pocket stunners, even though Mikal and Malin had brought more of the weapons, and there were enough for all.

  “We’ll be counting on you guys to protect our virtue,” Joaley said, as she tossed hers to
Jock while Kati shoved the one she had into a storage compartment of the flyer.

  “Worry not,” Malin assured her. “We Paradisans are big on women’s right to choose their partners. And how much of Kati being pawed Mikal can take is an open question.” He winked at the Agent, a half-grin on his lips.

  “I’ll take as much of it as is necessary,” Mikal snapped, checking his own stunner carefully.

  Kati grinned at him, but did not speak. His heart took a tumble at that grin; he had to struggle merely to keep from reaching to grab her and wrap her into his arms.

  *****

  The seven conspirators crept down the stone steps in silence, but fortunately not in darkness, since the staircase was lighted. Kati, remembering the hydro-generator at the Underground Base, wondered what the Margolises were doing for electricity here; obviously they were doing something. Whatever it was, it had to meet the needs of the Laboratory, the workers who ran it, and any overseers and visitors who might drop by. The last category included Canna and Xoraya, who had been comatose for quite some time now, apparently with not much effort on the part of anyone to see to their needs. How much longer could Xoraya in her bodiless state keep feeding the life-fires of the two women? Apparently the Master Healer had given her some tips on how to do it—

  “And the Ocean Sister is helping me,” Xoraya’s thought came in answer to hers. “It cannot continue indefinitely, of course, but for now, Kati of Terra, don’t worry about mine or Canna’s health. I’ll manage.”

  Yeah, Kati mused, she must concentrate on her role in the coming action.

  On the last step of the third staircase, Kati and Joaley stopped, just long enough to allow Mikal and Lank to slip by silently, and disappear into the shadows of the foyer, which were abundant, thanks to the scanty lighting. Mikal had asked Lank to partner him in this task since he was the smallest of the other men. The wiry half-Lamanian and the slight, half-grown Tarangayan could hide more easily in the dark corners than the taller and bulkier men could. Those three would stay high enough on the stairs to be out of sight, but ready to run down at moment’s notice to perform whatever back-up was necessary.