by J. S. Bailey
The hamster was now frantically biting one of the metal bars as if to gnaw it in half. “It’s him,” Dalton said.
“Then how are you going to explain to a child that her new pet isn’t coming back?”
“There’s a pet store next to my bank. I used to take my girls in there to look at the animals.” Dalton held the cage up at eye level. “All right, Mister Skweeks. You’re coming with me.”
Chumley emerged from his Cube looking rather cross. “I wish you hadn’t told them about me,” he said, throwing a look at Errin, who occupied Dalton’s extra office chair and wore a look of mild amusement.
“I thought you were dead,” Dalton said. It hurt him to say it. “And I have questions.”
Chumley leaned against the filing cabinet with a huff. He wore a lilac button-down shirt and khaki slacks that bore not even a wrinkle. “If you must know,” he said, “the explosion knocked me unconscious. The next thing I knew, I was in a cage in a child’s bedroom. You do realize I can’t shift back into myself if I’m in a cage; I’d get crushed to death.”
Dalton suppressed a smile. “So. Mister Skweeks.”
Chumley’s cheeks flushed. “Shut up.”
“You’ve got to admit, it’s cute,” Errin commented.
“We’ll have to come up with a plausible story for your disappearance,” Dalton said before Chumley could let out a retort. “Any ideas?”
Chumley scratched at an ear. “You could say I was knocked senseless during the battle, and a kind family who chooses to remain anonymous took care of me.”
Dalton thought it over and then nodded. “That works. We’d better get to the pet store before FCU gets here.”
“FCU is coming back?” Chumley gaped at him.
“Yes, why?”
“She told me they’d evacuate!”
“Who’s she?”
“Magdalene Schwartzman. This is crazy.”
“Who’s Magdalene?” Errin asked, sitting up straighter.
“Long story—I ran into some Verdant people during the battle. One got shot in the helmet so she ripped it off, and I thought for certain it was Naomi Schwartzman, but she said no, her name is Magdalene and that Naomi is her sister. She said the two of them trade information back and forth and that the only reason FCU came here in the first place was so Naomi could gather information about Nydo Base and pass it on to the Verdants, since the Verdants were busy killing someone else at the time.”
Dalton blinked. “Repeat that, please?”
Chumley did, slower this time, and Dalton felt his fists clench as his deputy’s words sank in.
“So FCU doesn’t give one flying feck about us.”
“I don’t know. The others might not know about Naomi’s connection to the Verdants.”
A thought entered Dalton’s head then, and he stood. “We have Verdant prisoners in the brig.”
He strode out of the room, hearing Chumley and Errin’s footsteps following him. Cadu sat at his desk, and his eyes widened at the sight of Chumley.
“Where did you come from?” he asked in disbelief.
“He snuck in the back,” Dalton said before Chumley could speak. “He’s gathered some intel I need to follow up on in the brig.”
Judging from Cadu’s expression, he didn’t believe a word Dalton had just told him, but thankfully he did not press the issue.
The brig lay in a separate building beside the station and contained four wide cells with iron bars. Dalton pushed through a connecting doorway and nodded at Debbie, who apparently had been chosen for guard duty, as she sat in a folding chair just inside the door looking bored beyond all reason.
It served her right for the salad.
The cells were so full, it was almost inhumane. Someone had been smart and grouped the Nydo Base miners and the Verdants in separate sections across from each other. They hurled insults in Haa’anu, which would have amused Dalton if these people hadn’t been responsible for his people’s deaths.
Dalton strode up to a cell containing a smattering of humans. “Do any of you speak English?” he barked.
“I do,” said a tall woman who unfolded herself from the hard bench on which she’d been sitting. She strutted up to the bars and looked him up and down as if he were a worm. “Colonizer,” she spat.
The woman looked remarkably like Naomi.
“Magdalene, I presume?” Dalton said. Chumley and Errin drew up beside him, the latter with their datapad out, ready to take notes.
Magdalene’s lip curled, but she made no comment.
“It’s funny, you calling me a colonizer,” Dalton went on. “Since your lot came here to colonize it in your own way.”
Her expression turned neutral. “What do you mean?”
“Your lot may pretend to hate the fact that life spread to the stars, but the Greens showed me what would’ve happened if you’d had your way on this planet. Is it typical for the Verdants to start farming on the worlds they target?”
“No.” Magdalene’s mouth twitched. “But Molorthia Six abounds in resources; we did some research on the way here and decided that the plains beyond the forests are some of the most fertile in the galaxy. We were going to build farms and feed the poor.”
“Yeah, well, the Greens didn’t want you to do that, did they? So they ripped your lot to shreds. You may have noticed.” For perhaps the first time in his life, he felt grateful toward the beings that had brought his own world to an end, which conjured such dissonance inside of him that for a moment he thought he might be ill. Recovering as quickly as he could, he said, “The Feds know you’re here. I don’t know when they’re coming, but you’ll be answering to them. See—you might think you’re noble, going along and smiting this lot—” He jerked his head toward the miners in the two cells on the other side of the room— “but it turns out that most people aren’t very happy with you.”
“Humans and Haa’la never should have left their own planets,” Magdalene growled. “We try to make good of the disasters they wrought.”
“How honorable of you,” Dalton said. Then, “Magdalene, you’re coming with me.” He fished a pair of cuffs out of the depths of his trench coat. “There’s someone I’d like for you to see.”
Dalton sent money and the cage with Errin so they could pick up a new hamster for the little girl (“I don’t care if it doesn’t look exactly like Chumley; you can tell her it looks different because it isn’t sick anymore!”), and then he and Chumley herded a restrained Magdalene out of the police station and down the street to Carolyn’s office.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Carolyn asked when they made it inside. “Naomi?”
“Not Naomi,” Dalton said, feeling smug for knowing something Carolyn didn’t. “But we’re going to wait here for Naomi.”
“You can’t keep me bound like this,” Magdalene sneered as Dalton forced her to sit in one of Carolyn’s chairs. “I have rights!”
“Not on this planet, you don’t.”
“You’ve really brought it upon yourself,” Chumley added. “Don’t blame us.”
Carolyn’s mouth opened and closed a few times. Then she cleared her throat and said, “FCU should be here in a few minutes.”
In fact, they arrived five minutes later in a Desert Van Lines bus that belched Naomi and her crew out into the dusty street. Dalton greeted them at the curb, wearing a manic smile that scared even himself.
“Good day to you all,” he said, sounding falsely gracious. “Have you had a safe journey?”
“It went as well as can be expected,” Naomi said in her clipped, professional tones. “We were sorry to hear of the battle that took place here.” There was a hint of unease in her expression that Dalton probably would have missed if he didn’t know the truth.
“We can discuss it inside,” Dalton said.
A sardonic spring appeared in his s
tep as he led FCU into Carolyn’s building and down the short hallway to the meeting room where city council gathered twice a month. Carolyn waited alone at the head of the table; her face schooled into an even expression that did a remarkable job of masking the rage Dalton knew was broiling within her.
“Please sit, all of you,” Carolyn said. “I’m glad to see you’ve all made it back safely.”
“It’s good to see you remain in good health, as well,” Naomi said as she and her cohort occupied the mauve cushioned chairs arranged around the rectangular table. All of them still wore their black business suits, and Dalton hid a smirk at the fact that the paler-complected members of her party were suffering from colossal sunburns.
“Yes,” said Carolyn. “We seem to have just survived the worst battle this planet has ever seen. Unfortunately, a couple hundred people from our community did not.”
“A fact I am terribly sorry to hear.” Naomi pulled a datapad out of a black messenger bag, laid it on the table in front of her, and activated its screen. “It is not customary for us to enter war zones.”
“Ah, but how could any of us have known it would become a war zone?” Carolyn mused. “On the day of your arrival, we’d only suffered minor attacks from the Greens. And I don’t use the term ‘minor’ lightly, as people were killed then, too.”
Naomi nodded in commiseration. “It is most lamentable.”
Dalton, who had opted to remain standing near the door for reasons of practicality, couldn’t wait to wipe the cool indifference off of Naomi’s face.
“So.” Carolyn folded her hands together, her eyes gleaming. “I trust your visits to our sister cities went well?”
“They went as smoothly as could be hoped.” Two of her cronies made silent nods, as if for emphasis. “It’s truly impressive how your people have been able to eke out an existence in such a hostile zone. Mayor Zhao in Cloud City said this region only receives rain three times per year.”
“We take our water very seriously,” Carolyn said. “I trust you’ve already discussed your plans with my counterparts, then?”
“Not as such.” Naomi exchanged a glance with the woman next to her, who of course didn’t utter a word. These people were nothing more than drones. Dalton wondered what would happen if you lit a fire under their chairs.
Carolyn’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “What do you mean?”
“You were our first point of contact, and you’re mayor of the largest city on the planet, so we will give our information to you, and only you. You may pass the information on to the other cities as you see fit.”
“I see.” Carolyn paused. “So, what’s the verdict?”
Naomi lifted the datapad a few centimeters closer to her face. “We have reached a unanimous decision that—”
A cry echoed down the corridor and in through the meeting room’s open doorway.
Naomi stiffened. “What was that?”
Dalton coughed and peeled himself from the wall. “That would be our prisoner.”
“You have a prisoner in the mayor’s office?”
“It’s not typical,” Dalton admitted, “but we wanted to bring her over here to commemorate this special occasion. Oh, Chumley!”
He heard a thud, followed by a curse. Dalton stomped from the meeting room and threw open Carolyn’s office door. Magdalene was on her feet with her hands cuffed behind her back, kicking at Chumley’s shins as hard as she could and mostly missing since Chumley kept dodging out of the way as he tried to regain control over her.
“A little help, here!” Chumley exclaimed.
Dalton strode forward, ignored the glob of saliva that Magdalene spat into his face, and seized her by the left arm.
“Grab her other arm,” Dalton said. “We’re taking her in.”
Chumley complied, and they forced Magdalene out of the room and down the hallway. It was like trying to steer an angry bronco that had developed the ability to swear.
Together, Dalton and Chumley shoved her through the doorway into the meeting room, and hurriedly closed the door behind them.
Magdalene had frozen. In fact, everyone in the room had frozen. Dalton wished he could take a picture and frame it.
“What are you doing here?” Naomi hissed, the color draining from her face.
“What do you think I’m doing here?” Magdalene’s eyes blazed.
“Magdalene here has an interesting story to tell,” said Dalton. “Chumley?”
Chumley cleared his throat and stepped forward. “During the battle in which the Verdants so rudely attacked us, I ran into Magdalene. She works for the Verdants. She told me that she asked Naomi to scout out our planet to see if Nydo Base had set up operations here. You can admit that FCU was never going to do anything to help. You were just acting as spies.” He glanced over at Dalton as if for approval, and Dalton nodded.
The woman next to Naomi looked stunned—the first expression Dalton had ever seen on her face. “Is this true?”
Naomi’s lips quivered. She looked cornered, and Dalton suspected she would try and finagle her way out of this situation using corporate doublespeak. “In a way,” she said.
“In what way?”
“Magdalene did ask if I’d come investigate this planet. They’d had their suspicions that Nydo Base was operating out of the Molorthia System, and Molorthia Six made the most sense out of all of them. We knew there would be a lot of ground to cover, but we agreed that if Nydo Base was here, there would be some disruptions indicating their presence.”
Disruptions, Dalton thought. Ha.
“So you came to snoop on our planet, using FCU as a cover,” said Carolyn. “Which seems like such a waste of time since you knew the Verdants would wipe our cities off the map once they had confirmation of Nydo Base’s location.”
“I didn’t know they were going to attack the human settlements!” Naomi cried. “I thought they would only target the mines!”
“Are you really that naïve?” Magdalene laughed, an ugly sound. “I thought you knew what we did to planets like this one.”
“But not to humans! It’s never been to humans!”
“These humans subjugated a vulnerable species. They deserved to die just as much as the Haa’la.”
“They subjugated us,” Dalton said, but he didn’t think anyone heard him. Naomi let out a snarl and launched herself over the top of the table toward her sister, as if they were no longer women in their forties, but rival children battling over toys.
Two of the FCU grabbed Naomi before she could reach her sister. The Schwartzmans swore at each other, calling each other things that would have made a nun blush, and Dalton opted to defuse the situation by guiding a flailing Magdalene out of the room and stuffing her back inside Carolyn’s office with a rueful-looking Chumley.
When Dalton returned to the meeting, a new argument was underway.
“How dare you insinuate that I was in league with my sister!” Naomi cried at Carolyn, her face awash with an angry flush.
“You already admitted you were scouting out our planet for her.”
“I didn’t know she would try to kill you! You know what?” Naomi paused to glance from Carolyn to Dalton. “I don’t have to put up with any of you. We’re going to the spaceport, and we’re going back to Earth.” She crammed her datapad into her messenger bag with a particular viciousness and strode toward the door, making a gesture for her people to follow her.
“But what about the donation?” Dalton asked, heart hammering in sudden alarm.
“You’re not getting one.”
Dalton stood and watched helplessly as FCU exited the room.
“Well,” Carolyn said, brushing her hands together. “That’s that.”
“But . . . but the air conditioners . . . ”
“We don’t even know if that’s what they were going to give us. And if you want air co
nditioning that badly, you can stay here in the municipal building, or order one yourself.”
The Feds arrived later that day, piloting a bulky prison ship that would have more than enough room for those shut inside the brig. As the prisoners were led single-file out the door of the police station toward the waiting transport, Dalton stopped Ashi’ii and said, “I suppose I have to thank you.”
She scrunched her pale face at him. “Why?”
“You told me about the Verdants. It was useful information.”
“I did what I could to help. My people wouldn’t listen.”
“That’s people for you. I hope you have fun in prison.”
She scowled at him. “Don’t think I’ll be there long.”
“You’re in cuffs.”
“I’m Ashi’ii Nydo. I have a business to run. This won’t stop me.”
The Fed agent guiding her rolled his eyes and said, “Come on, we haven’t got all day.” He led the Haa’la into the transport, out of sight.
Dalton didn’t see how Ashi’ii could start up her operations here again that easily. He’d been told that the Feds had landed in the forests and raided Nydo Base prior to their landing in Richport. As far as anyone could tell, all the Haa’la had been captured, and the few humans the Haa’la had put to work had been rescued and dropped back off in Paris, including a rather cross Keith Okpebholo.
Dalton and Chumley rode out to the spaceport as the sun hovered lower on the western horizon, and they watched together silently as the prisoners were guided from the transport to the great, hulking Fed ship, and stayed to see it rise into the air and grow into a smaller speck that vanished in the twilight haze.
“Well,” Chumley said. “That was interesting.”
“It was.”
“Do you think Ashi’ii will really find her way back here?”
“I sure as hell hope not. We’ve got enough things of our own to worry about.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“We’re going to go home and sleep, and in the morning we’ll go to work and carry on like always. We’ve got to work on your target shooting some more. Seems like we got sidetracked from doing that.” Dalton gave him a sidelong glance. The wind gusted stronger, and a damp scent hung in the air indicating a rare, incoming rainstorm. “Unless you don’t plan on staying.”