Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers

by Helena Puumala

  Suddenly they were surrounded by a half-dozen uniformed personnel who were breathless from running.

  “We came as quickly as we could get here, after we got your nodal emergency call, Agent r’ma Trodden,” the woman in charge greeted Mikal. “Looks like we’re late; you people handled the situation yourselves.”

  She was staring at the blood on the walkway, next to Morg’s body.

  “Yeah,” Mikal replied, nudging the pile of six confiscated weapons on the ground with his boot. “One of us did some physical damage, on account that the only weapon she was carrying happened to be not a stunner, but a dangerous knife. Fortunately she can also heal, so she fixed the problem that she created. Kati, where is that lace crystal knife? I don’t know, these Station Peace Officers may want to confiscate it. Is it a contraband weapon?”

  “I handed it to Lank before I started the healing,” Kati replied, and Lank drew the ornate stick that it now was, out of his pocket.

  The Peace Officer in charge took it and opened it. It was still bloody. She shook her head over it.

  “It’s not contraband; it’s just a knife, after all,” she said with a short, humourless laugh. “Some knife, though.”

  She shut it again.

  “Better clean it soon, though. This knife would buy you a nice home on this Station, and certainly on any Fringe planet. Where did you get it?”

  She handed it to Kati.

  Mikal chuckled.

  “She took it away from a Vultairian Exalted who meant to kill her with it, after raping her first,” he answered before Kati could get a word in.

  *****

  “This is going to be a bit more complicated than singing and playing our way across Vultaire was,” Lank said as the four walked towards the business section of the Space Station, having left the Station Peace Officers to deal with the three brutes. “Not that I’m complaining. I’m looking forward to scouring through that Ship Yard, looking for a suitable vessel. What’s going to be our cover story, anyway? Are we going to be Free Traders dealing in small objects like gem stones or pricey electronics, or are we going to trade on our musical talents in some fashion?”

  “We’ll have a bit of time to come up with a plan, I would guess,” Kati replied. “Making plans is more my thing, anyway, than knifing bad guys.”

  “As if,” muttered Mikal, eyeing her severely. “Remember to sprinkle your notions with as much caution as you used on Vultaire. Otherwise, I’ll veto them; democracy be hanged.”

  Kati giggled.

  “Obviously I’m not in charge anymore,” she said to Lank. “So look to Agent Mikal r’ma Trodden for instructions when you need them. I’m just another lowly peon now.”

  “Lowly peon, hah,” Mikal snorted, but now his eyes were dancing. “The lowly peon who just pulled us out of a sticky situation!”

  “Here we are,” Lank interjected, “on what passes for an Accommodation Strip on Qupar Station. We’re at the scuzzy end, by the looks of things. How low end—or high end—do we want to go?”

  “My guess would be, somewhere close to the middle,” Xoraya said. “If I’m not mistaken about how humans operate, that would attract the least attention, especially for a group our size. We don’t want to look like we have money to burn, but we don’t want to appear too cheap, either. Is my reading of this correct?”

  “Go to the top of the class, Xoraya,” Mikal answered. “You’ve got it. You only go cheap if that’s all your finances allow, not just for the appearances, but because economical is often uncomfortable and unsafe. Spending ostentatiously, on the other hand, can make you a target. Such are the realities of Life on the Fringes.”

  “Not in Lamania, though,” Lank objected. “Subsistence Level there is better than anything I ever had on Tarangay. And nobody lives high off the hog there.”

  Mikal snickered.

  “I do, as a matter of fact,” he said. “Only because Maryse got me top-of-the-line Professional Level family digs before I married Lashia, my former wife, and no-one thought to take that away from me after she divorced me. That’s why I told Rakil and Roxanna to park themselves at my place when they return to the Second City to attend the Academy. Hate to have all that space go to waste, when other people live in small flats.”

  “I’m sure that what you call top-of-the-line would make some of the rich on the Fringe Worlds laugh,” said Xoraya. “In my research into the human species I found out facts that would make a Lamanian head spin. On the Fringes, the difference between the poorest and the wealthiest can boggle the mind. Some people can barely feed their children anything, never mind nutritious food, while others live in huge mansions with an army of servants to cater to their every need. How the rich can live with themselves under such lack of fairness, I don’t know, but they do, have done so for generations, and plan to go on doing so.”

  Kati sighed.

  “You’re describing the world I come from, I’m afraid. It wasn’t like that everywhere, but there was enough of it to make one despair, if one stopped to think about it. Lamania may have its faults, but rampant inequality is not one of them; that fact alone made me like the place.”

  “Lamania has very few faults, to my way of thinking,” Lank stated with conviction. “Not that I mind being away from there, adventuring in all these less perfect places. But it’s nice to know that it’s out there, in the background, kind of as a show piece of the best kind of society that human beings can build.”

  “From my studies I have come to understand that Lamania is seen as an example,” said Xoraya. “The same is true of Shelonia, although for slightly different reasons. The other Star Federation Members look to those two when they attempt to improve their own societies—not to say that many of them don’t have their own positive aspects, too.”

  “What about this place?” Kati asked suddenly, pointing.

  They had reached the portion of the pedestrian walk lined with what looked like mid-list accommodations. Most of them were blocky structures that reminded Mikal of the Hostel he usually ended up at when he needed to visit the Star Federation Space Station—not the one that he and Xoraya had been booked into when he had brought her there, on his last visit. That time they had been in a VIP suite, a far cry from his usually modest room and bath. A fringe benefit of shepherding an Xeonsaur, that had been; the Xeonsaurs were rare and prized visitors to the centre of the human galaxy, which is what the Federation Space Station at least imagined itself to be. However, the building Kati was indicating stood out from the crowd, its facade having been recently painted grass green, as opposed to the tans and grays of its neighbours. Its windows (with their trim painted white) looked to have real glass in them, a curious affectation on a Space Station where the illusion of looking out from your room onto the walkways, was usually created with holograms. Or, more often, the illusion created was of some unlikely scene, such as an ocean and a beach, or a forest filled with colourful birds.

  Mikal shrugged.

  “We can go in and check it out, assuming everyone is willing,” he said. “If it doesn’t suit, we’ll try another one.”

  “Fine by me,” Xoraya agreed, and Lank nodded, while eyeing the structure curiously.

  Kati expected to find one of the computerized registration desks—not desks at all, as she understood desks, but, simply, computer terminals with translation node scanners on them—but the lobby of this Inn turned out to be even more eccentric than the outside had suggested. There was a counter with an actual person behind it, a perky young woman with a disarming smile.

  “Hello,” she greeted the group as they filed into the room. “You’re looking for accommodation, I presume?”

  “Yes, we are,” Mikal responded. “A room for us two adults,”—he took hold of Kati’s elbow to indicate her—“and two more for the younglings. What sort of pricing can you offer?”

  Xoraya was hiding her reptilian head crest under a Lamanian-style hood, while Lank towered over her in his youthful awkwardness. It had been his idea to pas
s Xoraya off as an adolescent; her hundreds of years were not visible on her face, and Lank had pointed out that people never looked at teens very carefully, unless they were remarkable-looking for some reason or other.

  Xoraya actually was remarkable-looking, but only if you paid close attention, or knew that she was an Xeonsaur, and since Xeonsaurs very rarely travelled away from their home world, that would not be the first thought that would cross someone’s mind on looking at her. Unless that someone knew that an Xeonsaur was travelling with Mikal, Kati and Lank.

  “If you’re all travelling together, I would suggest a three-bedroom suite,” the girl said, activating a screen on the counter to show them a floor plan. “We have a couple of them, and not really all that much call for them, so we rent them out at a very reasonable price. More convenient for you than three separate rooms, and more economical. Unless you want separate baths for all the rooms; a suite has only one, but it has a food preparation area in the sitting room.”

  Kati examined the plans of the suites, and the separate rooms with their baths. She only needed to take a glance at the price differential—the numbers were at the bottom of the screen—to tentatively make up her mind.

  “Can we take a look at a suite before we decide?” she asked.

  The lobby looked neat and tidy, and in good repair, but that did not guarantee that the rest of the establishment was the same. Qupar was a back-of-the-beyond Space Station; its major industry appeared to be Makally’s, which took up at least one-third of the Station. And they were hardly desperate, since there seemed to be a lot of choice on the “Accommodation Strip”.

  “Of course. You can look at both of them, if you want. Neither is rented out right now; like I said, we don’t get much call for them.”

  “But you haven’t chosen to remodel them into separate rooms?” Mikal asked as the young woman did something with her computer terminal, to lock the door temporarily, Kati assumed, while she would be out of the lobby.

  “My parents, who run this Inn, don’t want to do that,” the woman answered. “They’ve kept the old decor and look, just the way it was when they came here and bought the place, before I was born. Well, they have done upkeep, and added a few improvements for the customers’ convenience, but basically, while all around us were chasing the latest fads, we remained old-fashioned. This Inn was old-fashioned already when they bought it, and these days we’re the only one left with glass in the windows, and a receptionist at the front desk.”

  “It was the windows, and the colour of the outside walls that caught my eye,” Kati said, smiling. “I should imagine that you get a certain amount of custom that way.”

  The suite was not a luxury suite, but it was perfectly adequate, the rooms of decent size, considering that the Inn was on a Space Station, and not on a planet. After raising a questioning eyebrow in the direction of her companions and getting their wordless assent, Kati told the young woman that they would take it. They returned to the Lobby where Mikal passed his nodal connector spot over the scanner, directing the node to send the bill to the escrow account which they had created for the purpose.

  All four of them could access this account, and limiting themselves to it kept the rest of their nodal records from becoming available to everyone on every Space Station or planet that they visited. Its formation had required cooperation on all their parts, and a fair bit of wizardry by Kati’s Granda, but they had agreed that it was the best way to deal with finances during the trip. Federation credit chits would have been the alternative, and each of them had a small stash of those, tucked in a pocket for emergencies, but they were out to buy a used Space Ship. Paying for one with Federation chits would attract attention; it would be less conspicuous to offer a bagful of precious stones, or rare metals, for an old vessel, since they were posing as private buyers not affiliated with any government.

  “Do you want me to send for your luggage?” the young woman, who by now had introduced herself with the name Tieri, asked, after Mikal had collected four key chits for them.

  They had decided to ask for the keys, rather than use any nodal system, since Xoraya was not equipped with a node, and they did not want to draw attention to that. It was that lack which had made The Monk’s job with the escrow account particularly tricky, especially since Xoraya was the one providing the bulk of the money going into it. But the Xeonsaurs were never implanted with nodes, so they had to deal, and, so far, they had. In the process Kati had learned amazing amounts about the Galactic financial systems from the Granda, both the official ones, and the less official ones which The Monk knew from his earlier hosts, and which he had made full use of to fashion for them an account which would pass scrutiny while subtly misleading any probes directed at their personal information.

  Mikal shook his head.

  “We’re travelling light,” he said. “We’ll go and fetch our things ourselves from the ship which gave us a lift here. We can, at the same time, advise the pilot that, as far as we’re concerned, he can continue his journey. But thanks, anyway.”

  “Well, let me know if you need anything,” Tieri said, settling back into her seat behind the counter. “I’m here to help, any way I can.”

  “The Fiddler’s Green Inn,” Lank read off his key chit, once they were outside. “That explains the green paint, I guess, but I don’t see any sign announcing the name.”

  “Are you sure that’s the name?” Kati peered at her key chit. Sure enough, when she turned the thing the way Lank was handling his, a tiny holo appeared, of a building on a green meadow, and a musician in the foreground, with the words “Fiddler’s Green Inn” suspended across it.

  “Hm, if I’d known that...,” she let the words trail off as the holo died, and she slid the key into a vest pocket.

  “Something wrong?” Mikal asked.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Kati answered. “Just a weird coincidence. The Fiddler’s Green, according to some, on my home world, was supposed to be the lovely place we go to after we die.”

  “You’re the one who picked the Inn,” Lank pointed out, slipping his own key chit out of sight. “If the name’s some sort of an ESPy message, I suppose that it’s meant for you.”

  “Yeah,” Kati sighed. “Damned if I know what it’s trying to tell me, though.”

  “We’ll find out, sooner or later,” Mikal said, with a shrug. “It may just be a weird coincidence.”

  “Though, living inside your head, Earth woman,” subvocalized The Monk, “I’ve stopped believing in coincidences, weird or not.”

  “In that case, try to figure out what this one means,” Kati subvocalized back tartly. “If it’s important, I need to know.”

  *****

  They collected their belongings from the Cruiser, and released Josh, the Pilot, to return to the Federation Space Station where, apparently, new duties awaited him. Kati was surprised at how sad she was to say good-bye to the Space Ship and its operator. The trip from Vultaire, even with the stop they had made on Paradiso, had not been particularly long, not on a powerful vessel like the Cruiser was. But she and Mikal had had a chance to spend time together, and Kati had had an opportunity to hang out with a friend from the past, Ingrid, who was one of the people to whom they had given a lift to the planet Paradiso.

  The stop on Paradiso had turned into an overnight one. Kati had been determined to ensure that Ingrid, and her protégées, the Grenie girls, would be well looked after, before she continued her journey. Malin, the Paradisan who had elected to accompany Ingrid and the girls as a bodyguard, with his friend Canna, had told her not to worry, that Ingrid and the girls would be in good hands as soon as they reached Paradiso. When they all had alighted from the Cruiser onto the vast, flat, stone expanse which was the Paradiso Star Port, it had been apparent that he was right.

  This was not the time to dwell on thoughts of Ingrid and the Paradisans, however, Kati told herself. It was enough that the young woman who had given her strength to keep the quartet of preadolescents whom the Vul
tairian elites had abused, alive, had been received with open arms on the world to which the girls belonged. Ingrid would be fine, along with the girls who had reached their own turf, which now would sustain them, physically and emotionally.

  The travellers spent some time exploring the business section of the Space Station, poking around the various shops, and eating their meals in small eateries. As if through some tacit agreement, they avoided the drinking establishments; Kati had a vague notion that such places would be the ones most likely frequented by men like the ones that had attacked them. Also, the Station Peace Officers had told them that outside of fining the three brutes for carrying illegal weapons—the laser pistols—there was not much they could do. The local judicial system could be lackadaisical when it came to disputes among outsiders, especially if no lasting harm had been done. Thus, instead of checking out the night-life, the foursome repaired to their suite in The Fiddler’s Green Inn with a small jug of wine purchased at a stall by the restaurant they had patronized for supper.

  Tieri was behind the counter, and greeted them cheerfully, as they made their way to the stairs that took them to the Inn’s second floor and their suite. Other than that, they saw no-one in the Inn besides themselves, even as they had run into nobody when they had dropped off their luggage earlier. This struck Kati as slightly odd; hadn’t Tieri said something about her parents doing pretty well with the business?

  “Tieri works pretty long hours, it looks like,” Lank commented as they walked down the second floor hallway.

  “This is a family-run outfit,” Mikal said, “and in those the family members often put in remarkable amount of time on the job. Everyone pitches in to keep the business thriving.”

  That sounded reasonable enough, and they allowed the subject to drop as they entered their suite. Kati found some glasses for the wine while Lank checked out the local VidFeed, only to conclude that there was nothing worth wasting time on.

  “The usual silly storyline stuff, and local news of little interest to us,” he sighed. “Much like it was when I was making my way from Tarangay to Lamania, whenever my shipmates and I made a pit stop at some Fringe Space Station.”