Mission Pack 2: Missions 5-8 (Black Ocean Mission Pack)

by J. S. Morin

“Esper,” Tanny said. “Dig through the computer and see what they’ve been recording. If there isn’t anything topless, I might not decide to break any arms over this.”

  “Uh, OK,” Esper said. “But maybe we should think about Kubu. Mriy’s back. Maybe we let Carl hide out while we go rescue him. Then we can come back and pick up Carl before he gets into too much trouble.”

  “You got a plan yet?” Roddy asked. Tanny’d been beating herself up over rescuing Kubu, but every chance she got, she shot outside the firing range about something completely unrelated. That dog of hers was going to be the death of someone, whether it was his own jaws or Tanny’s mothering instincts making her stupid and careless.

  “We get close, take assumed IDs, swap to local transport, get planetside, take care of business, and the Mobius swoops in for a pickup,” Tanny said. “I’ve got the details sorted out, but that’s the barstool version. Two-man extraction team, just me and Mort.”

  “Whatever you say,” Mort said. But Roddy heard the careful-what-you-wish-for lilt that made him question whether Mort really meant a word of it. “As soon as we get Carl back.”

  Tanny scowled at the wizard. “We’ve already sat on this rock long enough with our tits flapping in the wind. We don’t need Carl for this plan. He can vacation in the Stone Age with his toy raceship for a few days. If I had a way to contact him, I would. But I’m not waiting for that inconsiderate ass to waltz back here before we go find Kubu.”

  “All well and good,” Mort said. “But I’ll wait here for Carl. Maybe even go looking for him.”

  “My tits aren’t flapping,” Roddy muttered into his beer before taking a sip, not making eye contact with anyone.

  “Maybe you’ve missed the comm, Mort, but we can’t drop astral without you on board,” Tanny said. “This isn’t a cryostasis barge. We don’t have months to spend limping there in realspace.”

  “Let Esper do it,” Mort said.

  “Since when does she know how to impersonate a star-drive?” Tanny asked, spreading her arms.

  “She is standing not ten feet from you,” Mort replied. “Try asking her instead of me. She’s not furniture, or some kitchen gewgaw. She’s a fledgling wizard.”

  “I learned last night,” Esper replied. “I’m… not very good at it yet.”

  “Wonderful,” Tanny muttered.

  Mort wagged a finger. “Humility is the devil’s quagmire. Confidence—”

  “Is the fuel of success,” Esper finished with an air of resignation. “I know, but truth has to factor in somewhere.”

  “Not if Carl’s any benchmark,” Roddy mumbled.

  “Besides,” Mort said. “You’ll need a wizard along to counter Inviu. Esper can manage that just fine.”

  “I’m guessing this Inviu has a little more practice under her belt,” Tanny said. “Maybe some real-world experience?”

  “Esper may be raw, but she’s human, with a proper human imagination,” Mort said. “She can pin Inviu’s magic to reality just fine. Laaku struggle letting go of science; it gets pounded into them too deep as kids.”

  “Here, here!” Roddy toasted, raising his can of Earth’s Preferred. “To science! And the stuff it brews!”

  “Sorry,” Tanny said. “I’m not having your first try taking a ship into astral space be the Mobius without Mort aboard.”

  Esper clasped her hands together with a quick glance at the ceiling. “Thank you.”

  “So no dice, Mort,” Tanny said. “We need you. Without Carl here, I’m acting captain. Do I have to make this an order?”

  Mort snorted. “If you need me, I’ll be roaming New Cali, looking for Carl.” He opened the door to his quarters.

  “Mort, don’t you walk away from me,” Tanny shouted. She followed him and pounded on the door after it closed behind him. “Mort, this is mutiny! Mort? Moooort!”

  The door opened moments later. Mort wore a button-down shirt and slacks. His tie was black silk, and his cuff links bore little Convocation sigils. He shrugged into a tweed jacket as he pushed past Tanny.

  “Mort, we need your help on this,” Tanny said, her face flushed from her shouting.

  Mort patted her on the cheek. “No, you don’t. You’ve got everything you need right here. Old Mort won’t be around forever, and you can’t get dependent on me. And to think, I promised you if you had me along I’d kill everyone in that little compound of hers, and you still picked me over Esper. I’m not sure which troubles me more, you thinking I was that sort of monster, or that you still wanted my help.”

  They watched in silence as Mort left the common room and waited until the sound of his footsteps was too faint to hear through the closed door. Even without magic, Mort had a way of exerting the force of his personality over the ship.

  Tanny’s wildfire had burnt itself out. She turned to Esper. “You still up for this?”

  Esper swallowed and gave a quick nod. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good,” Tanny said. “Pack your gear. We’re taking public transit the whole way.”

  # # #

  Mort looked over his shoulder, unable to shake the feeling that someone was following him. It was dusk, and the lights from restaurants and storefronts lit the sidewalks that he strolled. Whether this was supposed to be a replica New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or just some generic city with a Prime sensibility to it, Mort couldn’t say. There were pedestrians on all sides, cars whizzing up and down the streets—if those had been hovering a yard over the road, it would have felt like Boston Prime. He could see how people could fall in love with a place like this.

  He rounded a corner and ducked into the entryway of a barber shop, looming over an elderly man sitting on the stoop and reading a newspaper. “If you’re lookin’ for a trim, better get yourself inside,” the man said. “Saul’s closin’ up soon; it’s bowling night.”

  Mort spared the man a glance before he returned his attention to the way he came. He didn’t see anyone suspicious coming. “No. Hair’s fine. That today’s paper?”

  “Evening edition of the Tribune,” the man replied, eyeing him up and down. “You wander off the tour? I don’t remember seeing you around here.”

  “Something like that,” Mort replied. “I’m looking for a friend who got lost. Thinks he’s some sort of James Dean. Anything in there about a guy fresh from deep space wandering the colony?”

  “Not that I saw,” the man replied. “Welcome to have a look for yourself, if you want to sit a spell. I’m just readin’ up on last night’s scores. Cubbies done lost another one in extras.”

  “Thanks,” Mort said, taking the front section the man offered. The headline was about a local election coming up, and below the fold was a story about progress on a housing development. “By the by, what gave me away?”

  “What, that you weren’t from these parts?” the man asked. “Shoot, you got the look almost perfect, but you don’t act like you live here. Besides, one little detail done gave you away.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Them fancy-pants cuff links,” the man said. “Shoot, I bet you most folks these parts never seen a Convocation man before. But I wasn’t born back in time. New Orleans Prime, born and bred.” The pronunciation without the ‘r’ and condensed to two syllables led Mort to believe the man had at least been there.

  As Mort looked down at the front page of the Tribune and its headline about a local mayoral election, something caught the corner of his eye. There was a nun standing on the street corner, huddled against the pole of a traffic light. Her head was down, casting her face in the shadows of her habit.

  But the shape was off. There was a slouch and hunched shoulders that fit poorly with the prim and self-conscious imagine of the sisters of the cloth. A fleeting guess that Esper had followed him fizzled the instant he put it to the test of logic. She wouldn’t hunch or huddle, and the lack of curves was a giveaway. If Esper had used magic to alter her appearance, he’d have known immediately; that girl’s magic was as subtle as the police sire
n wailing two blocks away.

  “Sorry, I’ve got to run,” Mort said, handing the newspaper back.

  “Go on, keep it,” the man replied. “I already read that section.”

  Mort muttered a quick thanks and stalked over to confront the suspicious nun. There was decorum to consider when lambasting a holy woman in public, but Mort wasn’t planning to stick around New Cali long enough to suffer the long-term consequences of maligning an upstanding member of the community if it turned out he was wrong.

  “The bloody hell you doing following me?” Mort demanded in a harsh whisper once he was a mere pace away.

  “Follow me into the alley,” Mriy replied. Her growling voice was unmistakable.

  Mort did as she asked and joined her in a narrow alleyway between a pizzeria and a record store. It was just a paved corridor containing a dumpster and several steel trash cans. “You pea-brained fool,” he scolded. “Don’t you know they don’t like anyone but humans and the occasional laaku around here? You’re liable to run into some golly-gosh-jeepers cop who’s never been off-world and scare the bullets out of his gun.”

  Mriy shook her head, dismissing Mort’s objections. “You must have followed the same trail I did. Carl was seen at a drinking and gaming place named after a shark and was arrested after trying to steal a vehicle of some sort.”

  “Trail?” Mort asked. “This is the third city I’ve been to. I just took a map and looked from the starship parking lot to see where Carl might have headed.”

  “When I caught your scent, I assumed—”

  “Where the hell did you get that penguin suit, anyway?” Mort asked. “No, forget I asked that. I don’t like answering that sort of question, so I won’t hypocrify myself.”

  “Carl is being held in a jail not far from here,” Mriy said. “Had I not caught scent of you, I would have made the rescue on my own. With your help, it should go more easily.”

  “Goes without saying…” Mort muttered.

  “He is charged in the theft of a vehicle,” Mriy said. “He was injured, but has recovered. We should find him fit to retrieve.”

  “Well then, what are we waiting for?” Mort asked. “Aside from maybe a less conspicuous disguise for you.”

  Mriy backed away a step. “Not like last time.”

  “Last time was just pretty colors,” Mort said. “Those pirates believed in azrin. We can’t have the local retroverts seeing an off-world sentient. It would be nice if we didn’t narrow the lists of jailbreak suspects quite so much for retro-police. This might seem like a theme park, but we kick a hornet’s nest hard enough, we’ll get ARGO up our asses.”

  “That little laaku with the datapad was a pest,” Mriy said. “I don’t want to get jailed among Roddy’s kind.”

  “Then stick close, don’t draw attention to us,” Mort said, rubbing his chin. He considered Mriy’s size, build, and general disposition. “And if you think you can act like Tanny’s cousin Jimmy…”

  “The son of her Uncle Earl?” Mriy asked.

  “That’s the one. You’ll look like him, so just act like an angry business suit stuffed full of meat and keep your mouth shut.”

  “Can’t you think of a female disguise?” Mriy grumbled.

  Mort chuckled. “You look around this place at all? You don’t fit what they think of as a woman. I can magic you up a frilly dress, high heels, and red lipstick, but I don’t see you playing the part. Now hold still…”

  # # #

  Kubu watched the birds fly past overhead, one chasing the other. Since they were the same size with feathers the same shade of blue, Kubu assumed they were playing, not hunting one another. People weren’t supposed to eat their own kind, Kubu had been told by both Mommy and Not-Mommy, and he supposed that it applied to animals as well. Kubu envied them, way up in the sky, going wherever they wanted.

  “Whatcha looking at, big guy?” Chimjo asked. Not-Mommy’s assistant always followed Kubu around outside. It wasn’t as if he were going to get lost. Chimjo might have been a friend if he either didn’t talk at all, or could understand Kubu. One-way talking wasn’t very friendly.

  Kubu scowled up at the birdies, a low growl in his throat. What were their names again? “Two… bird,” he said, using Not-Mommy’s lesson words.

  “Those are tarquils,” Chimjo said. Kubu knew it was a lie, since they were very clearly birds. “Mrs. Inviu had them brought in and resettled from Ganges IV. They were dying out, but nothing she’s got here will hunt them.”

  “Kubu… bird?” Kubu asked. There were so many missing words in Not-Mommy’s language. Some he couldn’t remember, some he didn’t know at all. How could Kubu explain to Chimjo that he wanted to fly away, find the flying house, and go live with Mommy again?

  “Aw, you don’t want to eat those,” Chimjo said. The thought had occurred to Kubu. “There aren’t enough on the whole planet to make a meal for you. Plus, you’re not too selective about your hunting, and those little guys are mostly feathers.”

  “Kubu… am… bird?”

  Chimjo laughed. “Not likely. You’re a canid. That’s a family with dogs and wolves and that sort of animal. Birds’ve got hollow bones and feathers and wings. You’ve got two-hundred kilos of muscle and four legs. You’re not getting airborne without a ship.”

  “Kubu… want… am… bird.”

  “No, you don’t,” Chimjo said. “Flying without a ship might look like fun, but what kinda price you willing to pay for it? Those tarquils up there are dumb little buggers. Brains the size of a Chew-Pop. No hands, no teeth, no claws. All they eat is insects and seeds. You think anything that small’s gonna eat a rabbit? Or a deer? All they can do is fly away and hide if anything tries to eat them, and they’re lousy at it. But Mrs. Inviu doesn’t like things dying out, so she brought a bunch of the daft critters here to keep ‘em safe. You? You’re sentient. You’re going to grow up huge. Then you can make a living doing what you want—probably something in the area of personal security for someone with loads of terras. Don’t envy the damn birds over one stupid trick.”

  Kubu cast his eyes down. “Sorry.” He learned that word early on. It was probably the most useful word Not-Mommy had taught him.

  “Come on,” Chimjo said. “We ought to get back inside. You’ve got lessons in ten minutes.”

  Kubu sighed and fell into step behind Chimjo. He didn’t feel like racing back to the house today. As he loped along, he looked up to the sky. Even if flying was a stupid trick, those birdies looked happy up there.

  # # #

  Mort and the disguised Mriy loitered on a park bench across from the police station. It was a red-brick building, compact and functional, with a row of squad cars parked out front. Strip away the signage and remove the marked vehicles, and it could have been a public library. The setting sun cast the upper floor and roof in a pinkish light.

  “I don’t suppose it’s the sort of place where they close down for the night,” Mort said quietly, during a break in the pedestrian traffic.

  “Not from anything I’ve watched,” Mriy replied. “They seem to have copied everything from holovids, but this isn’t my field of expertise.”

  “Well, if either of us has watched enough bloody holos, we ought to be able to plan a simple jailbreak,” Mort said. It wasn’t as if they lacked for resources. A few police officers with primitive science guns weren’t much of a threat. As much as Mriy looked like Tanny’s gangster goon cousin Jimmy at the moment, she was still an azrin. And while Mort wasn’t terribly interested in drawing attention to the fact that a wizard was invading from New Camelot, he wasn’t about to let that stop him from busting Carl out of jail.

  “Wouldn’t these colonists be familiar with those tricks?” Mriy asked.

  “Hell. Probably,” Mort said. “Maybe it’s better if we try something original.”

  “I’m all ears,” Mriy replied, drawing a grin from Mort. It wasn’t often she pulled out a human idiom, but this one contained a nugget of an idea.

  “How good
are those ears of yours?” Mort asked. “Think you can hear through a brick wall?”

  “I’m not familiar with ancient human building materials,” Mriy said. “But this bench is uncomfortable, and I tire of waiting. No one around here serves decent food, and I haven’t eaten since morning. I’d be willing to eat a few of these police guards right now.”

  “Cap those fangs, Miss Carnivore,” Mort said. “These backwater retroverts are just playing out their little game world. Those cops are just soldiers doing a job. Not to mention that Carl’s almost surely guilty of whatever they caught him at.”

  “It’s Carl,” Mriy agreed with a nod. “I had assumed so as well.”

  “Well, just mind that we’re not exactly the forces of law and justice in this little holovid,” Mort said. “Sympathy for killing law enforcement usually ends at corruption. These kindly bumpkins might decide to call in for off-world backup if we kick them hard enough.”

  Mriy growled a sigh. “Agreed.”

  As dusk settled in, the wizard and disguised azrin strolled around the side of the building. Mort had a pleasant conversation with the streetlamps and moonlight, persuading them to look elsewhere to cast their revealing glows. Meanwhile, Mriy probed the outside walls of the police station, pressing a sensitive feline ear against the brick.

  Mort kept silent and waited. He knew that if she heard anything worth mentioning, she’d say so. Unlike certain other members of the Mobius crew, he knew how to hold his tongue. Pestering her with questions would only slow things down and possibly alert any officers within earshot.

  “I think I’ve located him,” Mriy whispered, ear still resting against the outside wall. “I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I recognize the cadence of the voice. He’s not alone. There are two other… make that three others with him. Male. Human. I can’t make out much else.”

  “How sure are you that it’s Carl?”

  Mriy shrugged. “You want to wait out here all night?”

  “Good point,” Mort replied. “They might move him, then we’d be starting over if we come back to this spot later. Stand back.”

  Mort wondered at the mortar. Such a curious thing, how a bunch of gloppy gray mud could hold bricks together to make a solid wall. It strained credulity. And even the bricks themselves were just baked clay. If Mort left a bunch of clay out in the sun, it wouldn’t turn into anything sturdy enough to serve as a wall. Someone really ought to check into whether this wall was really a wall at all. What if it was just a stack of brittle clay blocks, held loosely in place with mud?