Staré: Shikari Book Two

by Alma T. C. Boykin

  “Good dog, such a good dog. Oh you are a good dog.” Then she remembered who had been in the back room, taking a nap. Rigi clambered to her feet again and started toward the house. She’d not gone two steps before the back door onto the verandah slammed open and Siare emerged with Paul in his carrier, followed by Rigi’s mother. They flew down the steps and went to the side of the house, almost colliding with Tomás. He grabbed her mother and didn’t quite drag her out of view around the corner. What was wrong?

  Then Rigi looked beside her. A scatter of Staré limbs and flesh spread over the grass beside the hole in the lawn, and white fur floated in the light breeze. Rigi clamped her hands over her mouth to keep from vomiting, laughing, or sobbing. She wanted to do all three. Instead she backed up, stepped over Martinus, and sat firmly on the dry grass. She rested one hand on Martinus, patting him. Her mother was OK, Paul and Siare were fine, Tomás was with them. Where were Lonka, and Makana, and her father, and Shona?

  Two medium dark Staré appeared as if summoned by thought, helping her father out the back door. Shona brought up the rear, carrying a large covered pot in his forefeet and clenching a butcher knife in his mouth. I guess that means supper will be a little late, Rigi decided. I hope it isn’t tam. They’d had tam twice in the last week, and she really did not care for tam. Why am I thinking about tam? I should be helping Mother and Father, or moving Martinus, or being useful. Instead she stared at the green-edged hole in the back lawn. “Oh dust and dander. I’m going to have to clean you all over again, Martinus,” She groaned.

  “Wheefff.”

  “Not your fault. Good dog.” Her face felt hot and wet, and everything blurred. “Good dog.” She petted him again.

  Tomás found her petting Martinus and looking at the crater. “Auriga?”

  “I’ll need help, please. Martinus is a little bent and scorched on the edges.”

  “Auriga?” He sounded worried and looked quite concerned. Why? She was fine.

  “The Staré didn’t look right, Tomás. So I told Martinus to disarm him. I didn’t think the box would blow up.” She sighed. “Now I have to redo all the morning’s polishing work, and more. How are Mother and Father and Paul?”

  “They are fine. Your Father was on a ladder in the visitor’s room getting something off the shelf, startled, and fell. I think he broke his ankle.” He offered her his hand. She took it and stood, then clutched him, shaking. He patted her back. “Are you alright?”

  “Just— Just shaken, thank you. I didn’t think the box would blow up.”

  She felt his chest inflate and deflate as he took a deep breath, then let it out again. “No, even military parcels are not generally supposed to blow up without considerable prior notice. Unless it is an artillery or light-pulse round, but we don’t use couriers to deliver those.”

  He held her until she stopped shaking quite so badly, then helped her walk around to where her parents, Paul, and the Staré had gathered. She heard sirens and other sounds of official arrival. Her mother leapt up and almost crushed her, she hugged her so hard. Siare sat beside Paul’s carrier, rocking him. Rigi sat down beside her father. “Sir, I’m afraid Martinus is going to need a few repairs.”

  “That makes two of us, Rigi. Are you alright?”

  Was she? She hadn’t really thought about it. All the pieces remained attached, but her thoughts ran slowly. “I believe so, yes, sir. As I told Lt. Prananda, I did not expect the box to explode.”

  “What?” He stared at her. “A box exploded?”

  She nodded. It made the world spin a little and she decided not to do that again. “Yes, sir. And the Staré making the delivery exploded too.”

  Before she could go into greater detail, a swarm of Corporate Security people and emergency workers boiled out of their vehicles. “I’d better go secure Martinus, sir.”

  “Yes.”

  Rigi went back to the damaged m-dog. “Martinus, stand down.” She kept a hand on him as the security men stormed toward her.

  “Wheeff?”

  “Good dog.” More loudly she said, “I’m fine, please do not power-drain Martinus.” One of the men had a power-tap baton raised, intending to do just that. He hesitated and stowed the baton. “Thank you, sir. You might need to access his short-term memory files.”

  “Did you see what happened, Miss?” The man seemed familiar, but it was hard to tell with his dark eye shield.

  “Yes, sir. I was on the verandah, there,” she pointed. “Polishing and cleaning Martinus. He went on alert and I looked up and saw a seventh Stamm walking toward us, carrying a large box. I didn’t think about it, then realized that he’d come to the wrong door. He also seemed glazed over, not paying attention, and,” she took a deep breath. “I don’t know why, but I ordered Martinus to disarm him. I went to get Makana, but tripped and fell down on the verandah. Then there was an explosion. I waited until I stopped hearing breaking and falling noises, and went to check on Martinus. Then everyone came out of the house.” Her voice sounded flat to her ears.

  One of the emergency techs crouched beside her and said, “Track my finger with your eyes, please, Miss.” She tried, but he moved his finger very quickly. “Do you recall anything hitting you?”

  “No, sir, I was under the roof there.” She pointed to the verandah again. “Just there where the box of cleaning supplies is.”

  “Shock-wave stun. Probably not a true concussion, Miss, but you got shaken rather firmly.”

  “Please do not take this personally, sir,” Rigi said, looking up at the security officer, “but I do hope I go longer than four days before I next see corporate security under similar circumstances.”

  “You were at the incident at Brown’s, Miss?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The tech smiled. “Ah, you are the nurse’s aid. I thought you looked vaguely familiar. And between us two, I’ve told the captain the same thing more than once.”

  He helped her stand and walked her over to her parents. Once there she repeated the story, answered multiple questions, and wished everyone would just be quiet. She was starting to get a headache.

  “I’m afraid, Mr. Bernardi, that you and your family will need to find other accommodations tonight,” a fourth security man said. “The house appears sound, but we’ll need to document the scene and confirm that no damage occurred except to the windows and verandah siding. You may go inside to get clothes and baby supplies, but it will be better if you leave.”

  Before Rigi could protest, Tomás spoke up. “May my men and I remove the m-dog for repair? I am known to the m-dog, and we have repair facilities.” He gave the supervising officer his ID. “This is an unusual custom-built, older model m-dog and I suspect Mr. Kael doesn’t have some of the parts needed in stock.”

  “As soon as we finish measuring, chem-checking, and holo-recording the scene, you can move the m-dog, Lieutenant.” He returned the ID. Rigi relaxed. She’d been worried about someone learning Martinus’s secret. Tomás would keep it secret.

  A week after the explosion, after the house was repaired and the lawn filled in and patched, Tomás brought Martinus back.

  Rigi hugged the m-dog’s neck. She had not slept well since the attack, dreaming of the pale Staré and broken Martinus, seeing monsters bubbling out of the hole in the grass and dirt. “The decoration was not my idea, I assure you,” he told Rigi, hands up, palms out, as if to fend off a protest or worse. She stared at the enormous pale yellow bow tied around Martinus’s neck. “My senior subala informed me that it was a good luck sign.”

  Yellow, Rigi decided, was most emphatically not Martinus’s color. Especially not a pale pastel yellow better suited to a little girl-baby’s dresses. But if the Staré thought it would bring luck, who was she to fuss? “Please thank him.” Then she removed the bow and rolled up the ribbon. “Much better.”

  “Wooeef!”

  She tried once more. “Woof, Martinus. Say woof.”

  “Wooeef!”

  She planted her hands on her hips, g
lowering at Tomás, who seemed to be struggling to contain laughter. “Your levity is not appreciated, Lieutenant.”

  “But your graciousness is,” her mother said from behind her. “Please, come in, Tomás.”

  He bowed. “Thank you, ma’am.” Rigi and Martinus followed the two adults into the visitor’s room. Her father came in after a minute or so of small talk, and Mrs. deStella-Bernardi excused herself.

  “Any news, Tomás?”

  He glanced at Rigi, then seemed to make up his mind. “Yes, unfortunately, sir. Rigi’s observation was correct about the Staré. The autopsy results include evidence that he’d been drugged. The box had enough explosive to seriously damage the verandah and possibly the house, depending on where it was located when it exploded. When Martinus hit it and knocked it out of the Staré’s forefeet, it detonated early. Rigi, you did exactly the right thing when you went flat.”

  She looked down at the floor. She should have checked on Paul and her Mother, and Shona.

  She heard the frown in her father’s voice as he repeated, “But you say the Staré had been drugged?”

  “Yes, sir. I can’t give you details yet, because the security people are being quiet about it and I had to get special permission to update you this much. I can guess, based on what the sergeant said, that the Staré had not just been using dream-cud.”

  “No, because his ears were upright,” Rigi said without thinking. “Dream-cud makes their ears go odd directions, or so I remember hearing Lexi sniffing about someone.”

  Her father nodded. “It does. Jaihu and I found one of the sixth Stamm loaders using it one day when I was in the import-export cargo area. His eyes went different directions, as did his ears, and he had a great deal of orange droo— ahem, saliva coming out of his mouth.”

  Rigi wrinkled her nose. Why in the name of little white stars did people put that sort of thing in their mouths? Ew.

  Tomás’s eyes had narrowed as he listened to Mr. Bernardi. “Ah. Thank you, sir. I’ve never heard the symptoms described.” He had his uniform hat in his hands and rotated it a quarter way around. “I’m afraid the other news must not leave this room.”

  Rigi sat up, as did her father. Was it Uncle Eb?

  “Someone assaulted Tankutshishin early this morning, as he was going to the Place of Refuge. The Staré with him said it was a pair of humans, one of them broad shouldered and dark haired, with a sour smell.”

  “Like the one you saw?” Rigi blurted.

  “Perhaps. Since almost all humans have dark hair before sunrise…” he shrugged. “And it may have been a wig, or something else that seemed to be dark hair. It would be nice if just once the Staré noticed body shape and facial details rather than scents.”

  Rigi’s father snorted. “Have you spent any time on the northern continent on ColOne?”

  “No sir.”

  “You’ve heard jokes about ‘all LimWorlders look alike?’” Her father waited for nods. “Well everyone from the northern continent of ColOne really does look almost identical, because of the genetic stock and reproductive experiments that were used by the first settlers. They can tell each other apart, but anyone else? Good luck.”

  Tomás inquired, “Sort of like how some people from Home tried to explain that all Staré are identical, sir?”

  “Yes. Because Makana and Lexi and Rit, the seventh Stamm who worked for me as an office cleaner, all have long ears, tails, muzzles, and fur.”

  Rigi asked, “How is Tankutshishin, Tomás, do you know?”

  “I don’t. Security is being very, very quiet. I was informed because the thumping network had already told my men.” He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I wish military communications were half as fast and accurate as the thumping network.”

  Something about the attacks rubbed Rigi’s mind, making it itch. She patted Martinus’s head and thought as the men talked about something else, official gossip of some sort or another. At last, when they paused, Rigi ventured, “Tomás, Father, what if, ah, that is, um, what if the attack on Tankutshishin was a bluff, like wombeast males do, a threat charge? What if it wasn’t meant to kill him, but to scare him and the other Sogdia Staré?”

  “I suspect corporate security is looking into that, Rigi, but it is an interesting thought,” her father said.

  Rigi added, “Tankutshishin is the only first Stamm that most humans know of by name or sight.”

  “Hmm. I’ll keep that in mind,” Tomás said. “And I fear I must be off, sir, Rigi, now that I’ve delivered Martinus back home. My captain sends his compliments, Miss Bernardi, and says that if you should ever tire of Martinus’s company, he would be quite pleased to provide a good home.”

  “Humpf,” her father said. “That is my m-dog you are talking about, I’ll have you know.”

  Martinus tipped his head to the side a little. “Wooeef?”

  “Wooeef indeed,” Mr. Bernardi assured Martinus.

  Rigi closed her eyes and shook her head.

  16

  The Truth Emerges

  “Auriga, dear, do you know anything about Miss Sorensen? The older Miss Sorensen?”

  Rigi looked up from her sketch and blinked at her mother. Mrs. deStella-Bernardi sounded concerned and was fingering a set of brown and gold memory beads that a well-meaning soul had given Paul. He preferred to try to eat them than rather than using them for remembering prayers and petitions, and her mother had decided to put them away for now. “She’s danced with Cyril several times, ma’am. She seems a nice young lady, and I have not heard anything otherwise.” In truth she had not asked, aside from a few general questions. “I believe her father manages a fruit farm on the other side of the Kenusha Plain, and she and her mother are here so that she may have access to society and to finish a degree.”

  Her mother started to purse her lips, then relaxed them and lifted one perfectly curved eyebrow. “Ah, that explains it.” The eyebrow descended. “Thank you, Auriga. You have allayed a concern I had.”

  “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

  Rigi’s mother went back to her workroom, leaving Rigi sketching. She looked from the picture of the rabbit to a holo of a wombow and then to her pad. No, she was still missing something. The rabbit seemed three dimensional and alive, while her wombow, for all its detail, remained flat on the page. Was it her model? The owner of the wombow in her holo had named it “Sleepy,” and even for wombows it had a phlegmatic disposition. Rigi turned off the holo, initialed the page, and started again. She could use the study for that proposed children’s book about the fauna of Shikhari if a publisher decided to accept the author’s bid.

  She’d gotten the general outline onto the page when the little comm alerter on the table beside her buzzed. Rigi unfolded from the chair and closed the picture book, then hurried up the stairs. She logged into the general comm, then her personal one, and answered.

  After hearing five words and catching a glimpse of the image, she terminated the comm, and hit “emergency notify.” That forwarded the transmission’s general information to her father and Company Security. She stared at the now dark screen, shaking. But not with fear. Oh no, not with fear, but with raw anger. What sort of person would even think about that sort of thing? She could guess—the sort of beast who would drug an innocent Staré and send it to a house with a bomb, or who would shatter a young woman’s coming-of-age dance with a blister gas in the ventilation system, blinding almost a dozen people and hurting twice that number and more. And who would attack one of the senior first Stamm Elders of Sogdia. Rigi knew she shouldn’t think so harshly of others, but she wanted the Creator and Creatrix to strike that person with the rod of justice right then and there.

  The comm beeped. The identification showed it was from her father’s office. “Yes, sir?”

  “Auriga Maris Stella, do not go out without both Martinus and Makana. Do not ask why, just obey me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I’ve advised Corporate Security that you will
have them with you. And stay away from any disturbances.”

  She never went to disturbances. Rigi wondered if she should be scared. No, she decided to be angry instead. “Yes, sir. I sent the message to Corporate Security as well. I only heard a few words, then stopped and forwarded it.”

  “You were wise.” He looked furious and more than a little scary. “Do not answer any unknown comms for the next while, please. For your own sake, Rigi. I don’t want you seeing more of that—I will call it garbage—if the person or an associate of theirs tries again.”

  “Yes, sir. I do not want to see it either.”

  “Thank you. Bernardi clear.”

  Since she’d planned on taking Martinus and Makana with her that afternoon anyway, she didn’t change her plans. Should she tell her mother? Most certainly not, Rigi decided. Her mother was already tense and upset, and Paul seemed to be getting colic again, which did nothing to sooth matters. And if Cy had decided to ask permission to start courting Miss Sorenson, well no wonder her mother was just the slightest bit unraveled on the edges.

  Rigi flipped to the news feeds. “What further proof is needed than the incident on the Indria Plateau?” Mrs. Debenadetto was saying to a holo-reporter. “The Staré have made their feelings plain. They want humans to return governance of this world to its indigenous sapients.”

  The image cut to yet another protest, this one blocking traffic at the intersection near where the subala minor had been shot. Rigi noted the location and relaxed. She was going to a smaller market a kilometer or so away to pick up several items her mother had ordered that had been sent to the wrong branch. “There is no point in paying extra to have them delivered when Auriga can go and fetch those items for Siare as well.” Which meant Makana had to come along, because Rigi could not handle the items in question without them needing to be purified afterward. If you didn’t understand the reason for Stamm, Rigi mused once more, it certainly made life excessively complicated. Or if you did understand it, sometimes. There were a few nuances that completely escaped her, the bit about shadows not having Stamm at night but having one of two Stamme by day being a notable example. Rigi wanted to ask Lexi if there was a mistranslation somewhere.