First, with great effort and considerable mumbling, sat up and got dressed in clothes that were several sizes too big for her.
“How do you even know about alcohol?” she asked as she struggled with the torn pants.
“I’m Lividite. We know everything about everything where mind-altering substances are concerned. Our civilization runs on them, after all. But what I can’t figure out is why you drank so many.”
“I didn’t start out to.” First cradled her head in her hands. “But they just kept going down easier, and I kept feeling better. Then I stopped feeling better. Then I don’t remember. Then I woke up and puked a lot and there were wolverines fighting inside my skull, and the only thing that made me feel better was more beer. And then I ran out, and now I would like to die, please.”
“Sorry, you’re out of luck there. But I will get you home and full of liquids and electrolytes.” Hashin threw her arm over his shoulder and lifted her up to her feet. “You’re not dying; it only feels like it.”
A connection came through the team’s private link from Loritt. “Hashin, what’s our status on the SunRunner?”
“I’m running the inspection now, boss.”
“And? How’s it looking?”
“Oh, you know creative types, always leaving a mess. We’ll need to hire a cleaner.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. “You don’t mean…”
“Oh, no, no,” Hashin assured him. “Just a normal broom-and-bucket cleaner. This place is a disaster. Oh, also we need a new escape pod.”
“Why? Is it broken?”
“Hopefully not, seeing as First jettisoned someone from the bus in it.”
“She what?”
“The details are a little unclear on my end,” Hashin said. “But it sounds like she took off with the band’s singer still aboard and somehow stuffed him into the escape pod before leaving orbit.”
“You know that’s technically kidnapping, right?” Loritt said. “Send her up here, right now.”
“Negative, boss. First has been, ah, poisoned.” It had the advantage of both being true and sufficiently vague.
“Poisoned? I’d lead with that next time, Hashin.”
“Sorry.”
“What’s her condition? Is she in danger?”
“Her condition is like whipped glot, but she’s recovering.”
“The hell I am,” First mumbled.
“Quiet, you,” Hashin said under his breath. “I’m taking her back to her apartment now to recuperate.”
“Keep me apprised; I want to see her as soon as she’s back on her feet. And make the arrangements for the SunRunner. We need to turn it over to the leasing company as soon as possible. The margins were already thin on that job. We can’t afford to let docking fees eat into them day by day.”
“Understood, boss. Consider it done.” Hashin looked over at his charge, whose head had found his shoulder to rest on. “Come along, pup. Back to your cave.”
After several false starts, dead ends, and less-than-helpful redirections from the nearly comatose human girl—scratch that, woman—hanging off his neck, Hashin finally navigated First to her door. She dug through her purse for her key card at a positively glacial pace, finally growing so frustrated she elected to simply dump its contents on the hallway floor and sift through them until she located it.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” First said. “I feel really stupid.”
“We’ve all been where you are, pup,” Hashin said. “That’s what your friends are for. Just don’t make a habit of it.”
First laughed, then winced at the pain it caused her. “My friends are a scarecrow, an order of crab rangoon, a drug-dependent gray, a brain in a jar, and a Picasso print. Oh, and a granite statue.”
“Is that an insult?”
First giggled. “I wouldn’t trade y’all for the whole galaxy.” First finally located her key card and held it aloft like a trophy. She ran it through the door slot. “I’m warning you; my apartment might be a little messy. I’ve been gone a few days, and my roommate doesn’t have a lot of time for household chores.”
“It can’t be worse than the bus,” Hashin said.
The door slid open with the sort of hiss that betrayed poor maintenance. Hashin let it pass without comment and entered the apartment with First close behind, then came to an abrupt stop while he surveyed the rather alarming scene before him.
“First. I don’t mean to pry into your private life, but”—Hashin turned to face her as he popped a Serenitol into his mouth without a chaser—“when you said your apartment might be ‘a little messy,’ were you trying to prepare me for the possibility I might witness a very dead body pinned underneath the not-inconsiderable mass of a Grenic like a stomped-upon packet of McDonald’s ketchup?”
First, who had suddenly sobered and turned several shades whiter that usual, looked up from the still-drying carnage on the floor.
“I was preparing you for dirty socks and empty takeout boxes.”
Hashin nodded. “I was afraid of that. Guess we’re going to need the other kind of cleaners after all.”
* * *
It took the rescue and recovery crew more than an hour and two burned-out winches to lift Quarried Themselves off the “victim.” Everyone knew Grenic were heavy, but few really understood just how massive the silicon-based slabs of the Assembly Council really were.
A Lividite security officer, a female named O’Chakum, had already come to take crime scene holo-recordings and witness statements, but First was tight-lipped with her, and it would take all day to get Quarried’s statement. Then Loritt invoked his attorney be present for any questioning, and O’Chakum relented and agreed to schedule an interview at a later date. Once the team was alone again, the speculating began in earnest.
The deceased’s race was not immediately apparent, owing to how thoroughly the corpse had been flattened under the Grenic’s bulk. But their reason for being in First’s apartment in the first place became obvious as soon as the viscera and bone shards were cleaned away from the message engraved into Quarried’s face.
Someone, presumably the corpse, had been busy with the hammer and chisel found crushed into what remained of their hands.
“WATCH YOUR BA … What do you suppose that means?” Loritt asked the assembled.
“Baggage?” Sheer offered. “Like, don’t check a bag, stick to carry-on? That’s good advice.”
“While wise,” Loritt said. “I don’t think that’s—”
“Watch your barricades,” Jrill said. “Solid defensive strategy. The enemy can always send sappers to probe your—”
“Again,” Loritt interjected. “Good guidance, but—”
“Watch your back,” First said from her spot in the corner of the room, huddled under a blanket and sipping on tea. “It’s a human expression. It means I’m being watched and I’m in danger. It’s supposed to be a threat.” First stood up and let the blanket slough off her shoulders to the floor. She moved over to her Grenic roommate and touched their rock-hard face with a fleshy hand, gently. Lovingly.
“It was meant as a threat, to get my attention,” she said, still admiring Quarried. “But they messed up, and my friend ambushed them. People think rocks move slowly until the landslide comes. I told y’all the Grenic were always watching, waiting. You didn’t believe me.” First turned her gaze to the rest of the crew Loritt had assembled before she’d ever been considered. “Well? How about now?”
“I think we could use a long-term sentry at the entry to Loritt’s penthouse,” Jrill said.
“You’re goddamned right you could,” First said. “After that graffiti shit on their face is repaired. I mean healed.”
Loritt’s hearts swelled at the fuming little human’s display of unflinching loyalty to a being she hardly knew and who hardly knew her. Were they all like this? Was that how the species held themselves together so … so ferociously in the face of their new place in the universe? Over the eons, other c
ultures introduced to the thousand races of the Assembly and thereby the enormity of their own insignificance for the first time had disintegrated into madness and despair.
But not the humans. Their confidence in their own moral superiority, if anything, seemed to have been tempered in the fire like the steel of a fine sword. As arrogance went, the feat was quite remarkable.
“Unfortunately, it will take years for that injury to heal,” Loritt said. “But I’m sure we can arrange for some spackle and paint.”
“Who was trying to send the message?” Hashin asked. “That’s the real question.”
“Soolie,” First said.
“Do you recognize the deceased as one of his goons?” Loritt asked.
“There’s not much left to recognize, but I’d bet my deck on it,” First said. “Who else could it be?”
“We do steal people’s things for a living, at least from their perspective,” Hashin said. “You tend to acquire enemies rather quickly.”
“Hashin’s right,” Loritt said. “I’m not saying Soolie isn’t at the top of the list of suspects, but he’s not alone on it, either.”
“So what do we do about it?” First asked.
“Get you into different quarters, for starters.”
“I’m not leaving Quarried here alone. Not now.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Loritt said. “Bring them.”
“Fine, and then?”
Loritt stretched his arms. “I’m open to suggestions from the audience.”
“Boss.” Hashin looked up from his handheld. “I hate to interrupt, but we’ve got a bigger problem right now.”
Loritt held out a hand to the corpse as the cleaners started scraping it off the tile with spatulas. “Bigger than a Grenic and a flattened body?”
“Yeah,” Hashin turned his display around so Loritt could read the alert that had just popped up. “I’m afraid so.”
* * *
Simmering like a hot skillet, Loritt stood before the All-Seal to the Pay to Prey, now locked firmly behind a security barricade and crime scene warning tape.
“Station security rounded up the Andrani we haven’t shuffled off the station yet, too,” Hashin said quietly. “There wasn’t enough time to trickle them all out. Security wants to sit you down for an interview.” He grimaced. “At your convenience, of course.”
“Call my lawyer.”
“Already done, boss. He’s on top of it.”
“And charging money by the larim.” Loritt turned and faced the rest of his crew. “Money that is now locked away on the other side of this tape and will be for months, maybe cycles, while the case worms its way through our generously named ‘justice system.’ The only question now is who blabbed to security over my specific instructions.” Loritt straightened up and put his arms behind his back. “First, step forward, please.”
First, still unsteady on her feet from whatever ailment had befallen her, said, “You got something to say to me?”
“Yes. Your employment is hereby terminated.”
“Screw you.”
“You already have,” Loritt said.
“Boss,” Jrill said, but Loritt held his hand up for silence.
“You’ve screwed me quite expertly,” he said without looking away from First. “In exactly the way I asked you not to. Do you know how badly you’ve hurt the rest of the team today?”
“Boss—”
“I’m not unfair or cruel,” Loritt continued as First’s eyes narrowed into lasers. “I’ll hold the footage of you stealing my aircar from the authorities in reserve, just in case you have any thoughts about trying to get back at me in some creative way. But my experiment trusting a human castoff has failed. Go back to your cup games.”
“Boss!” Jrill shouted at last.
“What, Jrill?”
“You can’t do that.”
“Oh?” Loritt took a step toward the former military Turemok and looked up into her implanted red eyes until they flickered. “I’m fascinated to hear your theory as to why not.”
“Because First didn’t tip off security.”
Loritt’s patience boiled over. “Then who did?” he shouted.
Jrill squared her considerable shoulders and looked Loritt right in the eye. “I did.”
Loritt took a step back as if the two little words had socked him right in the stomach.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a rakim to recover. “But did you say—”
“I alerted security,” Jrill confirmed.
“Why?”
“Because First was right, boss. We’re a legitimate outfit. We’re rated, bonded, and insured. But that doesn’t mean glot if we’re willing to look the other way when laws are being broken, especially something as serious as trafficking juveniles. No matter the cost to the bottom line.”
“You’re suspended,” Loritt snapped off. “Two months without pay.”
First slid in between the two of them. “Then I’m suspended for two months, too.”
“I just fired you!” Loritt said.
“No, you didn’t,” First answered. “And now you’re down two key people.”
“Three.” Sheer scuttled forward. “Sorry, boss, but they’re right.”
The wind bleeding from his sails, Loritt turned his attention to Hashin. “Et tu, Brute?”
Hashin tucked his handheld into a pocket to give the moment his full attention. “My people have, over the cycles, become known as neutral, dispassionate arbiters in many conflicts.” He took a small but significant step backward toward the trio. “But I find myself siding with the rebels in this. We should have acted immediately. The delay cost precious time to find and prosecute those responsible, boss.”
Loritt reeled from the daggers in his chest. Imagined or not, he felt them sinking into his flesh. “So it’s just me and the Fenax, is that about it?”
“We haven’t actually asked Fenax yet,” First said.
Loritt smiled wryly. “A mutiny in defense of the law. That’s got to be a new one. How did I assemble such a crew of softhearted criminals?”
Jrill cleared her throat. “We’re trying to follow the example you set for us, boss. You just got bogged down in the details and lost sight of it, that’s all.”
“And while this payday is in limbo”—Loritt pointed at the confiscated Pay to Prey—“and our contracts dry up? How will we eat?”
Hashin perked up. “Space for Rant is going up for auction in two days. The resale market has been paying a tidy premium for luxury yachts over the last few months, so that should work in our favor. Also, we can still expect a more modest payday out of the Wolverines’ tour bus, unless we can find a motivated buyer.”
First laughed. Everyone turned to face her. “Sorry, but it just occurred to me. I was too hungover to see it. But the answer was right under my nose for the last four days.”
“Well?” Loritt said. “Don’t leave us in suspense.”
“You still have Jrill in suspension.”
“It’s rescinded. Expel.”
“Loritt Chessel,” the insufferably self-assured human female said. “I give you your good friend and running-for-whatever, Ulsor Plegis. He—I think it’s a ‘he’—was desperate to score Wolverines’ concert tickets at your party and lamented that he wasn’t having any luck.”
Loritt rolled a finger in a hurry up motion. “Go on.”
“Well, he’s a politician. They’re all rich, right? It’s not about money to them after a while but access. Exclusivity. If he buys the Wolverines’ tour bus at our positively absurd terms and delivers it back to them, unaltered, with his complements, I can assure you on good authority that’d earn him a concert ticket.”
“But you just got into one of their concerts to steal it. Easily.”
“Yeah, on a forged ticket,” First said. “What, you really thought I’d pay full price for one of those things just to hear three-century-old Quiet Riot songs? They’re sold out for months. Our mark can’t afford to get caught using doct
ored stubs for entirely different reasons. I’d just been denied entry. But for him, it’d hit the news and he’d be seen as cheap. That’s the kiss of death for anyone in his position.”
“Firstname Lastname,” Loritt said. “That is the most convoluted, backstabbing, double-dealing, brilliant thing I’ve ever heard. Make the arrangements.”
“And mine and Quarried’s new apartment?”
“Town house.”
“With an aircar garage?”
“Don’t push your luck.”
First folded her arms over her chest and nodded. “Done.”
CHAPTER 12
First melted into the body-contouring deck chair and positively luxuriated under the sunlight, from a real sun.
When was the last time she’d felt genuine sunlight on her skin? She pondered the question as she applied another layer of suntan lotion to her arms and shoulders. Ten months? A year? It had been in one of the rec domes back on PCB, she remembered that much. The sun above was not Proxima Centauri. Indeed, if it could even be seen from her home planet, First still wouldn’t have any idea which one of the thousands of pinpricks of light it was.
She slid the oversized sunglasses resting on her nose up to her forehead and glanced around the rest of the inlaid wooden deck. Hundreds of other sun worshipers of all shapes, sizes, and colors sat or lay around the cruise ship’s pool. Some of them even had green skin and fronds opened and turned to the light, likely photosynthesizing their dinner while they rested.
They didn’t have to worry about losing the sun, either, because they were orbiting it. The Monarch of Space was a, ahem, titanic vessel built for pleasure alone, with twenty-five hundred cabins for as many as seventy-five hundred passengers and enough onboard stores for a month’s cruise in the Tekis Nebula, home of the famous burgeron herds. Those creatures, the galaxy’s largest, were a little over halfway between the two stars of the binary system that had formed inside the nebula. They were gradually slowing down using nothing but the gentle pressure of the very sunlight First was drinking up before they would stop and then begin accelerating back toward the other sun in their centuries-long circuit filter feeding on space-born plankton and organic compounds.
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