Tales of the Dissolutionverse Box Set

by William C. Tracy

  Rilan couldn’t speak for a moment, fighting around the lump in her throat. She wasn’t an emotional woman.

  “I would be honored, Ori,” she said.

  Last Delivery

  999 A.A.W.

  PART ONE

  Plots and Deals

  - In recent years, some merchants have cried foul against the maji raising prices on portal creation. While the portals are the only way to link our homeworlds together, they are also a drain on the already overworked houses of the maji. But I feel passing this cost on may have a worse result. By driving away the traveling merchants who connect our different cultures, I believe we may generate much more contention and even war among the ten species that make up our coalition of worlds.

  From a travelogue of Morvu Francita Januti, Etanela explorer and big game hunter

  From the safety of my metal transport, I eyed the natives around the market’s foreign district. The group of Sureriaj was bigger than it had been five minutes ago, and some of them were holding signs. Others were holding sticks.

  “We need to go,” I told Amra.

  She handed local coinage in change over the table to the gangly Sureri buying spices. “Why? Go where?”

  In answer, I pointed one finger to my left, aimed at the growing mob of aliens through the windshield of the transport we used to carry and sell goods. Our market table was set up in the pilot section of the transport, looking out through the open side hatch.

  “I don’t think they’re here to buy our marshfern seed, Prot,” Amra said. She moved a protective hand over the colorful piles displayed for maximum scent and visual effect. Past the table and through the hatch, I could see other market-goers perking up at the disruption.

  “Maybe they want the Ibora labat,” I suggested. “It was the best deal on the Lobath homeworld at the time.”

  “The dried crushed redcap has been selling better,” Amra said, but she was already standing, dusting off her yellow wrap.

  I let our joke pull the edges of my mouth up, trying not to let her know how concerned I was. I had seen things like this before, and they could get ugly, fast. “Get this packed up. I’m going to get the others moving.”

  My accountant, and the love of my life, pulled her wrap close to shift her chair out of the way, face tightening. She scraped spare change into a pouch, then reached for the cover to the spice boxes, economical of motion.

  I slipped around the edge of the table and down to the ground, calling for my bodyguards and mechanic. “Kamuli! Bhon! Saart! Time to get moving.” I waited for a response, shivering in the chilled air. In addition to the growing throng in the market, other Sureriaj wandered through their cold and faded port town like hairy long-legged gargoyles. So many of them in one place had me on edge, though it was their homeworld. I could vaguely hear the crowd abusing a Kirian merchant farther down the line of stalls. Her feathery crest was flattened in fear.

  No one answered. I pulled myself up into the engine section of the low domed transport, waving away the stink of burning coal. “Saart—what are you doing? We’ve got a group of Sureriaj ready to—”

  “Where’s the fire?” rumbled a deep voice. A hairy shape loomed in the corridor. Mogflaratan Saart, Maker, held a massive wrench in one three-fingered paw, pushing up his glasses with the other. There were grease stains in his graying fur and on the belts of pouches across his belly. Working on one of the turrets again. His pet project.

  “The fire might be us, in a few more minutes.” I told the Festuour. “There’s a mob of locals out there who don’t look like they want to do business.”

  Saart wrinkled his long snout, blue eyes peering at me. “I thought the Naiyul port was neutral territory for the families? Won’t the constabulary thugs take care of it?”

  “I don’t want to chance it.” I ducked my head back out the door. The mob was chanting something now, with feeling. “Get this thing moving instead of arguing.” Saart hrumphed at me, but turned awkwardly in the narrow corridor, grumbling back to the engine.

  “Who’s arguing?” came another voice. The other Festuour member of my team rounded a nearby building, her mate in tow. “And why aren’t I part of it?”

  “You and Kamuli get the chocks out from the wheels,” I told her. “And keep your handcannons ready.” I pointed at the crowd of Sureriaj again. One sign was close enough for me to make out a word in their spidery script: ‘go.’ I didn’t need to be able to read the rest of it.

  Bhon grinned up at me with pointy teeth, excited at any prospect of violence. “You got it, boss. We saw them a few minutes ago. We were coming to tell you all, but maybe we can pick off a few on the way out.” She sprinted toward the third and fourth sections of the transport—the living and cargo sections—on stumpy furry feet. Kamuli was right behind her, brilliant white teeth and headwrap flashing against her dark skin.

  I clambered back to the pilot section, all four sections of the transport rumbling as the engine clanked to life. Amra had the spices back in their boxes, and was clutching the money purse and her ledger where she kept all our expenses. No time to pack this inventory with the rest in the cargo section.

  “Everyone ready?” I called into the speaking tubes placed around the pilot’s chair. Amra closed the side hatch with a clang, the table and chairs thrust hurriedly out of the way. She climbed into the co-pilot’s chair.

  “Engine’s running,” came Saart’s voice, tinny, from the speaker.

  “Bhon and I are set,” Kamuli said from the living quarters.

  “Ready,” said Amra, jotting down numbers in her ledger, no doubt calculating our losses from closing up early today. She curled a strand of dark hair behind one ear. We had been here less than a week, but I already knew we needed to get off Sureri and to a homeworld less detrimental to our health.

  I pushed on one of many levers before me, and the transport crept forward. It was slow to start, but once it got moving, it was hard to stop. The mob blocked the exit to the market road, and there was no way I could turn the transport around without taking half of the sun-bleached buildings with us. More merchant stalls blocked the other end of the road, and my transport didn’t do reverse well. I’d rather run into the wall of inhospitable Sureriaj than my fellow merchants, who were packing in a hurry at the rising discontent.

  Amra tensed as I made my decision and accelerated. “We’ll have to go through them. Hang on!” I yelled into the speakers, and pushed the lever farther. The transport sped up. Several of the mob were pointing now, and I could just make out a couple words of their language filtering through the metal sides of the transport, mostly things like “thief” and “go.”

  I gritted my teeth and kept moving forward, faster than a walk, not quite fast enough that the group couldn’t get out of my way. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, especially merchants. Even the liberal families would be quick to revoke our merchant license if that happened. But if an offworlder got injured on Sureriaj? Well, that was their fault.

  The transport pressed into the mob now, and several of them banged on the sides. I tried to ignore the metallic pounding.

  Then something hit the windshield with a thump. Amra cried out and ducked, and I jerked in my chair. A leafy vegetable of some sort rolled away.

  “Boss,” came Bhon’s voice through the speaker. “These gargoyles are gettin’ fresh with the sides of the transport. Want me to pick a few off?”

  “No!” I shouted, and ducked again as another rotten vegetable squished into the glass. Amra shook her fist at the offending alien.

  “What did we do to you?” she shouted. Then to me, “Why are they all so pale?”

  I looked through bat-like faces as I drove. “I think they’re all from one of the northern families. Roftun, or perhaps the Baldek family.” Both were conservative and isolationist, even for Sureriaj.

  “Shove them away if they get too close,” I shouted into the speaker, a death grip on the motive lever. I heard the clang of a hatch o
pening. “No killing!” I hoped Kamuli would rein her fiery mate in, though the large woman held her own share of knives along with her medical pouch. She was as skilled in taking people apart as putting them back together.

  The mob crowded close, pushing back as much as the transport pushed them. I heard the engine whine as the mass of people slowed the wheels. I moved the motive lever farther up, giving it more juice.

  There was a shout and a clang from outside, and Amra jumped as a curse shot through the speaker system.

  “Was that Kamuli?” she asked, and I grunted agreement. The composed woman spoke little and swore almost never.

  “Everything alright back there?” I called. I tried to ignore the hostile faces pressed against the windshield.

  “Kamuli got hit with a rock!” Bhon growled. “I’m gonna kill those—”

  “No!” Amra and I shouted in unison.

  “Kamuli?” I asked. If the big woman was down, her mate would go ballistic.

  “I am well,” Kamuli said through the speaker, though she sounded shaken. “Only bruised.”

  “We’ve got to clear a path,” Amra said, getting up from her chair. “They’re going to stop the transport before we get through, and Bhon won’t last that long without shooting one of them.” Her dark eyes cast around for objects in the pilot’s section. There weren’t many. I tried to concentrate on not crushing any angry Sureriaj.

  “Aha!” I heard Amra shift something behind the merchandise table.

  “What—” I looked around in time to see a spice tray pass by at head height. Fine particles of the orange spice floated through a beam of bright sunlight. My mouth screwed up and directed a fantastic sneeze into my shoulder.

  “This should work fine,” Amra said. She jerked the hatch open and flung the stuff out into the crowd.

  The reaction was immediate. Sureriaj grabbed at their eyes and mouths, and the pressure on the transport lessened. I pushed the motive lever forward, blinking through tear-filled eyes.

  The heavy steel transport was originally made for much bloodier pursuits, and drove through the sneezing and crying Sureriaj with ease. When the last of the four linked sections—our space for cargo—was clear of the mob, I put the transport to full speed, its small wheels churning, leaving the crowd far behind.

  “Anyone following?” I asked Amra a few moments later.

  She got up again, balancing against the rough roads, and opened the side hatch to peer out. “There’s a couple running after us, but they’re slowing down. The rest are going after that group of Methiemum who were selling two kiosks down.”

  I let out a long breath, blinking the last of the spice away. She would have chosen the Ibora labat. That stuff was potent. “I don’t envy them.” I slowed enough to make a wide turn and Amra clung to her seat to keep from falling. Once down a few more side streets, I stopped the transport completely.

  “Everyone up front,” I called.

  We clumped together outside the pilot section. The four parts of the transport were linked together with large coupling rods and pins, but that meant the only way to travel between them was by going outside. Perhaps a flaw of the original designers.

  “What the hell was all that about?” said Bhon. Younger than Saart, our other resident Festuour, Bhon was short, covered in light green-yellow hair, and had a snout full of teeth and bright blue eyes. She was also deadly with a handcannon or a crossbow—both hung from the bandoliers crossing her chest—which lent a lot of weight to her words. Or at least a lot of violence. I was glad none of the mob of Sureri had gotten the wrong end of one of her guns, or I would be dealing with a lot more than a shaken crew. Right now, she was dabbing tenderly at a shallow cut on her mate’s forehead.

  “It was one of the conservative families—Roftun or Baldeks,” I said, “though I have no idea why. The Naiyuls are going to be livid they interfered in their trading port affairs.”

  Sureri was run by the major families of the Sureriaj, each as large as one of the ruling nations on Methiem. The Sureriaj took families seriously. With two males and one female to conceive a child, and with a slow rate of reproduction, the family was the most important social unit to a Sureri. Neither rewards, nor work, nor money, nor love would make a Sureri abandon or betray their family. For the most part.

  That was where the disgraced family came in—the Naiyul. It consisted of those Sureriaj from all families, large and small, who had been disowned for crimes and indiscretions. They made a small family all of their own, and ran the one trading port—Naiyul Montufal Desretre—where aliens were tolerated, barely, and bargained with.

  “The city is dangerous enough already,” Kamuli said. She brushed Bhon away, though with an appreciative smile for her mate. Unmodified by the speaking tube, Kamuli’s voice was rich, with thoroughly pronounced vowels. “Should not the gangs in charge be ready to protect their sections of the port?”

  There was a thin line the criminal clans toed, as none of the Sureriaj liked outsiders, but it was also the one place on their planet where goods could arrive from offworld. So merchants, if not welcomed, were at least not attacked and robbed on sight. Until today.

  “They’ll be ready next time,” Bhon said, cracking her knuckles. “And there’s gonna be turf wars in the next few days over this.” Her grin was malicious, and her mate slapped the Festuour’s shoulder with the back of her hand.

  “Behave.”

  “Our sales will be terrible until this dies down,” Amra said. She looked down at her ledger like a favorite pet. “We might as well throw the rest of the spices in the gutter, except we haven’t made enough to buy passage off this world yet.” Her skin and dark brown hair had respectively tanned and bleached in the brutal sun that favored the Sureriaj homeworld. The trading town was dry and dusty, and one would think the blazing rays would at least take the time to heat the ground on the way to burning our skin. No such luck. It froze during the night and was merely cold during the day. I was told it was the height of summer.

  Saart had been watching the whole exchange, arms crossed, a wrench grasped in one paw. “At least if we dump them, my food won’t taste like greenwort mushrooms anymore.” He looked between us, then down at Amra’s ledger. “If I have to make another flapjack reeking of a squidhead’s foot, I may stop cooking altogether. But if we can’t sell them, won’t that eat into our money like a rat in a seedbag? How much do we have left?”

  “I, too, would be interested in seeing return for our hard work with the Lobath,” Kamuli spoke up, adjusting her headscarf away from her wound.

  “Yeah, we were on Loba for four months to gather this stuff! The transport still stinks of those squiddies.” Bhon looked affronted, though that was similar to her usual expression.

  I looked between the two. Kamuli Balion and Shrimasharimsa Bhon, Guarder. They couldn’t have been happy on Sureri, where they had to hide their attachment from the xenophobic locals, but they were right that we needed to sell our cargo to leave.

  “I know.” I spread my hands out, palms up. “These are the best tasting spices we’ve found in years.”

  “It didn’t help the mushroom farmers of Sa’Lob had very little appreciation of our finer trinkets.” Amra put in. “We barely made enough to schedule a portal here.”

  “To this washed-out excuse for a town,” Saart said.

  “What can I say? Sureriaj love Lobath spices.” I shrugged. Still, I had hoped to make a quick sale and be off to a friendlier homeworld before now.

  “The market will be a ghost town for weeks,” Kamuli added helpfully.

  I ran a hand down my face, and answered Saart’s original question. “Like Amra says, we won’t have enough for a portal without selling the rest of this.” I waved a hand at the cargo section, farther down the road. After several unprofitable ventures, we were living from trade to trade. We hadn’t been back to Methiem, where Amra and I hailed from, in almost a full cycle. “Bloody maji, hiking up fees on their portals.” />
  “You can’t blame them for everything. Let’s pack up for today and find a safe spot to park the transport overnight,” Amra suggested.

  I nodded. “I’ll see if I can run down any good deals tomorrow morning.”

  “And we’ll sell these spices like they’re grown from the Nether crystal itself,” Bhon said.

  * * *

  The next morning, back at the market, I sat with Amra, leafing through my notes on merchant contracts. Some dated back all the way to when Saart and I started the business together, many cycles ago. We could have been mercenaries, except the strange fellow we bought the transport from insisted any ordnance was gone, any stored energy dissipated. Saart’s pet turrets might have been useful yesterday. I wondered how much mercenaries made.

  There had to be someone else on Sureri who wanted to take a transport full of spices.

  Wearing a rich wrap the color of the crushed redcap, Amra presided over the trays of fragrant powders displayed like so much colored sand, but we had made only one sale so far.

  I flung the sheets down. “There’s nothing here. All the smart merchants know to avoid Sureri. If I had listened to you the last time we made a big sale, we could be sitting in a little shop on Methiem right now, waiting for the customers to come to us.”

  “You didn’t know the frost radish market was going to tank so soon. Besides, you like traveling in this old thing.” She patted a metallic wall companionably.

  “But you don’t.”

  “I love you, and that’s enough. I just—” She cut off and I sighed.

  “I won’t subject a child to this life. There’s time for that when we’re settled.”