New Decameron Forty-Two: Catherine Asaro (Patreon)

The Vanished Seas

Catherine Asaro

Chapter I

Light glittered through the crystal columns in the ballroom of the Quida mansion. Women in sleek clothes and men in sensual black and silver filled the room, all with the ageless beauty that wealth and power could bestow. Music played while the glitterati danced.

So yah, these people were rich.

To say I didn’t normally attend parties with Imperialate nobility was like saying it didn’t normally rain in this region of the world Raylicon. I mean, this place was a freaking desert. The few humans who lived here had built the gleaming City of Cries, the stark jewel of the empire, a paragon of modern civilization and all that. Not that it wasn’t true. The City of Cries, despite its name, wasn’t a place where people wept, at least not where you could see.

Tonight the planners had done themselves proud in this reception for Scorpio Corporation, a simple name for a conglomerate that was anything but simple, an empire of commercial industries and military contracts. I’d attended as a guest of the Royal House of Majda, because, well, who the hell knew why. Majda wanted a private investigator present, so I went. After all, they paid me an exorbitant retainer, not to mention the penthouse they’d given me in Cries. Although I’d never been at ease in their stratospheric world of influence, I’d adapted during the two years I’d worked for them, Earth years, the human standard. To fit in tonight, I’d even worn an evening gown, chic and shimmering gold, the type of clothes I usually avoided like a techno-plague. I was normally a black leather and muscle-shirt gal.

The Quida mansion stood on the outskirts of Cries in the foothills of the Saint Parval Mountains. Attending the gala had started out as one of my easiest jobs ever, just go to the party so I could later tell the Majdas if I noticed anything “unusual.” They apparently wanted me to judge how the guests reacted to whatever big announcement the Scorpio slicks had planned for tonight.

With so many of the Imperialate’s mighty gathered together, none of the invited guests noticed when Mara Quida disappeared. It told me a lot more about this supposed esteemed gathering than they probably wanted me to know. As Vice President for Sales and Marketing at Scorpio Corporation, Quida was the guest of honor at tonight’s gala.

You’d think they would have noticed when she fucking vanished.

***

Four of us gathered in an alcove upstairs, hidden from the ballroom while the gala continued downstairs, its entitled guests blithely partying. The small room here gleamed, white with silver accents. Detective Talon, the head of security for Scorpio Corporation, paced across the alcove, rigid in her gray uniform, with silver hair and silver ribbing on her sleeves. She surveyed our group as if she were trying to fix us in place with her stare. Screw that. I had no patience for people who expected to intimidate me instead of earning my respect.

Besides myself and Talon, our group included two other people: Colonel Lavinda Majda, third in line to the Majda throne; and of course Mara Quida’s husband Lukas Quida. We were isolated from the gala; Lavinda’s “aide,” the redoubtable Lieutenant Jo Muller, stood hulking at the bottom of the sweeping staircase that led from this alcove down to the main floor, out of earshot but not out of sight, pretending to be the colonel’s assistant. Yah, right. Majda bodyguards were about as discreet as power-hammers.

“Who knows Mara Quida is gone?” Detective Talon demanded. She spoke to Colonel Majda, which made zero sense. How would Lavinda know?

Lukas answered. “No one is aware of her disappearance yet except the four of us.” Light from the chandelier glinted on his silver hair. He was too young and too rich to be going gray; that metallic look had to be deliberate. The effect was gorgeous. So was he, the trophy husband, with his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and handsome face.

Lavinda spoke coolly to Talon. “Why does it matter who knows?” She looked every bit a royal heir, with her dark coloring and aristocratic features. The green tunic and trousers of her dress uniform were sharply pressed and gold bars gleamed on her shoulders. Her dark eyes, high cheekbones, and smooth skin showed no trace of irregularity. I recognized her upright military carriage because I also stood that way, but only in part. I’d never exuded that sense of authority, a self-assurance so ingrained, I doubted she even realized the confidence she projected. I’d always respected Lavinda, in part because she never tried to intimidate anyone. She did it anyway, to put it mildly, but it wasn’t deliberate.

Talon’s discomfort actually seemed more with Lukas than the Colonel. The detective glanced at Lukas when he spoke, then looked away quickly and talked to Lavinda instead. “It could help to know. None of our searches have given any clue why his wife vanished. She might have had her own—personal reasons.”

Ouch. That was as subtle as thwacking Lukas with a hammer. I doubted his wife had run off with another man. Why do it in the middle of this gala intended to honor her? Lukas wouldn’t have asked for our help if he believed it was anything that simple, not to mention humiliating. That he’d called us here suggested he had good reason to suspect trouble.

Lukas spoke with restraint, but his body had gone so tense, he seemed like a band of elastic ready to snap. “She didn’t have a ‘personal’ reason.”

Talon grunted, and she still wouldn’t look at him. Seriously? The atavistic era was long gone when matriarchal queens owned their men, when no woman could speak to a highborn man unless she was a member of his family. Modern culture gave men equal rights with women. In the Skolian Imperialate, a star-spanning civilization with nearly a trillion people, almost no one followed the ancient customs, only a few of the most conservative noble Houses—including the Majdas. Since they cloistered their princes, hiding the prized fellows from the rest of the universe, some families among the highest society here followed similar customs. Although legally they couldn’t get away with keeping their men in full seclusion—they weren’t Majdas, after all—they could still be ridiculously sexist. Lukas had asked us to come here, though, so I doubted he had any use for those barbaric constraints.

I spoke directly to Lukas. “How did you discover your wife was gone?”

He turned to me, his shoulders coming down from their hunched position. “Mara was about to announce the Scorpio contract with Metropoli. She intended to present the Metropoli execs with a scroll, a ceremonial parchment. She went to get it about an hour ago. When she didn’t return, I looked for her.” He raked his hand through his hair, messing it up, which revealed more than he knew. He didn’t care about his appearance, he just wanted to know what the hell had happened to his wife. “She wasn’t in our room,” he continued. “The remains of the scroll were on the bed. It was ripped up, like it had been caught in a fight.”

Talon frowned as if he were a lying child. “Those ceremonial scrolls are museum pieces.”

For flaming sake. What was wrong with Talon? He finds the bedroom in shambles and her only comment is about the damage to a thing?

Lukas met her gaze, neither averting his eyes nor stepping back. “What’s your point?” He looked ready to explode.

I spoke quickly, before Talon could cram her foot farther down her throat. “Your wife went to a lot of trouble for this gala. It must be quite an achievement, what she arranged on Metropoli.”

He took a deep breath, waited a moment, and then spoke in a more even voice. “Yes, it is. She was about to make the announcement. Scorpio will be managing the usage franchises for the northern continent on Metropoli.”

Holy shit. No wonder Mara Quida wanted to party. “Usage franchises” meant Scorpio had just taken over the electric and optical utilities for the largest continent on the most populous world of the Imperialate. A contract like that would involve billions of people and trillions of credits. Nothing could hide the admiration in Lukas’ voice, and I had the impression he appreciated what she had achieved because of her accomplishment, not because he expected to gain from it in financial or social terms. He offered a refreshing contrast to the other guests I’d met tonight.

“I see,” Talon said. She watched me with poorly disguised suspicion. People in Cries claimed I had a “wild “quality, whatever that meant. It was true I could go places no Cries citizen dared visit. No one here knew that, however. Besides, I was the least dangerous person in this room. These people took “threatening” to an entirely different level, one that would terrify any sane person who understood how the technocrats of Cries navigated the currents of power in their glittering city. I wasn’t one of them and I never would be no matter what my Majda ties.

Well, tough. If Talon thought she could intimidate me into leaving, she had no idea. I met her stare, and her expression hardened.

Someone coughed. Talon turned away and spoke to Lukas. Although she sounded awkward, at least she looked at him this time. “We need to trace your wife’s actions, everything she did for the past day.”

“I’ll go over it with you,” he said. “Anything you all need, just let me know.”

Max, are you getting all this? I thought.

Yes, I am recording. The thought came from Max, my EI, or Evolving Intelligence. I used my neural link with him for privacy. He usually “lived” in my gauntlets, but tonight he resided in the slender bracelets I wore instead. He sent signals via sockets in my wrists along the bio-optic threads in my body to bioelectrodes in my brain. Coated with protective chemicals, the electrodes fired my neurons, which my mind interpreted as thought. Tech-induced telepathy. I wished I actually were telepathic, so I could figure out what everyone here thought. I had to rely on intuition and my ability to read body language, voices, and facial expressions.

Talon took Lukas through every detail of the gala preparations. Security had searched the bedroom, looking for a body. They found nothing. They also checked their monitors. Big surprise, the footage for those vital moments in the bedroom was missing, with no clues yet as to why.

“What I don’t get,” Talon was saying, “is why someone destroyed the scroll. It’s as valuable as your wife, maybe even more so.”

Lukas stiffened, and I stared at the detective. Was she brain dead? She continued, oblivious to the pain she was causing Lukas. “Whatever ransom they can get for her would be greatly increased if they also held the scroll hostage.”

“That assumes this is a kidnapping,” I said, more to shut her up than because I actually thought something else had happened.

Lukas turned to me with a jerk, as if he were trying to escape Talon’s words. “What else would it be?”

“To answer that,” I said, “I need to look more at the bedroom.”

Talon frowned at me. “This is an internal Scorpio matter. We will take care of it ourselves, officer—” She paused as if waiting for my name, which pissed me off, because as the chief investigator here, she would have checked my identity with her EI the moment we met. Her refusal to acknowledge my name was an insult more effective than any words she might have used.

Diplomacy, I reminded myself. Be courteous. I said only, “Major Bhaajan, army, retired. I’m not a police officer, I’m a PI.”

“And why are you here?” Talon spoke with disdain, in an accent that sounded Iotic, the language spoken by the nobility. It also sounded fake. I wasn’t impressed.

Lavinda turned her cool gaze on Talon and spoke in a true Iotic accent, which I doubted she even thought about. “Major Bhaajan works for the House of Majda. I requested her presence.”

“Oh.” Talon closed her mouth.

I wondered what stake Lavinda had in this. As a sister of General Vaj Majda, the Matriarch of the House of Majda, she operated on a level of power I could only imagine. She was also a colonel in the Pharaoh’s Army; I doubted she had either the interest or time to involve herself in her family’s corporate dealings. The third sister, Corejida Majda, ran their finances. I hadn’t expected such a highly ranked Majda to attend the gala, but given what I’d just heard about the Metropoli deal, I saw now why they were interested. They controlled the city, and that meant knowing everything that went on at its highest levels.

It was also obvious why Lukas requested Lavinda join us. He was no fool; he knew whose presence would get the police snapping on this case.

“Can you help?” he asked me. Smart choice. Asking an heir to the Majda throne would be presumptuous, but addressing the Majda rep acknowledged their sway.

“I’ll do my best,” I said. “I’m good at finding people.”

Talon spoke tightly. “We are grateful to Majda for offering this aid in our investigation.”

She didn’t sound grateful, she sounded like she wanted to throw me out the window.

***

The bedroom looked like hell: cracked tables, shattered holoscreens, and mirrors in jagged shards on the ground. A filigreed nightstand had broken in two. The scroll lay on the bed, torn and crumpled, but even with that, I recognize its value. I’d grown up in the ancient ruins under the city, a buried world rich with the remnants of past ages, and I’d learned to respect such artifacts. This one didn’t look native to Raylicon. It probably came from the planet Parthonia, the seat of the Imperialate government, which made it even more valuable. I had to admit, Talon had a point. Who in their right mind would destroy that scroll? Mara Quida plus the artifact would bring the kidnappers more wealth than Mara alone.

Max, I thought. Make a record of all this. Use my eye filters.

I’m recording in the optical spectrum, he answered. Also infrared and ultraviolet.

Good.

A holoscreen on one wall was cycling through views of the room. I blinked, startled. I barely recognized the tall woman it showed, a statuesque figure in a shimmering gold evening gown with a cloud of black curls falling down her back. Yah, that was me. Strange.

My walk around the room gave Max many views of the wreckage. I paused by Talon. “Can you send me the police reports after their analysts finish their work here?”

The detective turned her cold stare on me. “Aren’t you making your own recordings?”

“Yes. But I can’t get the same detail as their experts.” Talon knew that.

“It’s up to them if they send you their report.” She turned back to her work, ignoring me.

I gritted my teeth. She knew perfectly well that if I asked for the report, as the Majda rep, she had to send it to me. Let it go, I told myself. I had no interest in getting involved in her turf war.

Lukas paced the room, restless, never pausing, but he stayed back, respecting our space. He had class, this one. I didn’t want to like him, on principle, because I’d grown up in poverty and these people were all too rich. But I couldn’t help it. He seemed like a decent fellow.

When he caught me watching him, he came to where I stood with Talon. “What do you think?” He directed his question to us both, letting us figure out whatever hierarchy we were inflicting on each other. Smart. I wouldn’t want to get between me and Talon, either.

“Your wife clearly fought with her captors,” Talon said.

“It’s possible,” I said. “But something is off.” I motioned at the mess scattered across the floor. “It doesn’t look like anyone stepped on this debris. Those broken mirror shards are like knives, but none of them show any sign of blood. And it would take more force than two fighters slamming into that nightstand to break it in half.”

Lukas went very still, hope warring with fear on his face. “You don’t think they fought with Mara?”

I gave him the truth. “I’d say an explosion blew apart this room.”

Talon spoke quickly. “I doubt it.” Before I could respond, she walked away.

Well, screw that. I tamped down my anger. The last thing Lukas needed was to see the investigators on his wife’s case at odds. I even understood why Talon left so abruptly. It wasn’t just to piss on the PI trespassing on her jurisdiction. She didn’t want to tell Lukas his wife could have died. I realized then her rudeness with him came from awkwardness rather than insensitivity. She had no clue what protocol applied to a man with his high rank, and yah, with his beauty, too. He rattled even me, and I’d thought I was immune to that sort of thing. She obviously wasn’t comfortable talking to him without his wife present.

Lukas spoke quietly to me. “I haven’t received a ransom demand.”

“That isn’t so unusual,” I said. “She disappeared less than an hour ago. It could be hours before they contact you.”

His face paled. “And if this was an explosion?”

I spoke as gently as I could. “We’ve found no trace of blood or any clue that she suffered injuries.” It was the closest I could come to reassuring him.

Lukas rubbed the heel of his hand over his eyes, smearing away tears. “I just—I don’t understand.” He lowered his arm, watching me as if willing us to make sense out of this nightmare. “We planned so long for tonight. She was so happy! I can’t believe it ended like this.”

“I’m sorry.” I meant it. “I swear to you, we’ll do everything we can to bring her home.”

“Thank you, Major.” He went back to pacing.

I exhaled, fearing I’d raised his hopes too much. This didn’t look good. No, that was too mild a word. It looked like bloody hell. I continued my investigation, not only of the bedroom, but also in the surrounding areas. I stopped on the landing of the curving staircase near the foyer and stood at the rail, studying the foyer below.

Talon joined me. “The police analysts are here. We’ve also set up monitors in case Del Quida gets a ransom demand.”

Del Quida. She used a high title of respect for Lukas, only a hair’s breadth below Lord. She had to get me the report, so she wasn’t telling me much, but at least she was trying to be civil. Maybe with Lukas somewhere else, she could relax.

I touched the crystal sphere at the top of the banister. It was just the right size to rest your hand on as you started down the stairs. “Someone twisted this.”

Talon peered at the ball. Light from the chandeliers refracted through the crystal, creating a rainbow on the rail. “Looks normal to me.”

I tapped the stem of the ball. “See that mark? Someone turned the sphere.”

Talon straightened up. “I doubt it means anything.”

“Probably not.” It just struck me as odd that in such a perfectly kept mansion, this ornament was out of place.

Lukas came over to us. “I don’t see any way someone could have broken into the bedroom.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Talon said, gazing at his shoulder.

His voice cracked. “She has to be all right.”

Talon finally looked at him. “We’ll do everything we can to find her.”

Lukas just stared down the staircase. The guests had left, and the robo-servers that cleaned the mansion were waiting patiently for the police analysts to finish their work. Yah, I knew the cleaners were machines, that “patience” didn’t come into it, but they looked that way, robots of all sizes and shapes arrayed in a silent row while human analysts applied yet other machines to study the crime scene.

Lukas took a deep breath. “I should check on things.”

“You go on,” Talon told him. “We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

Lukas nodded and headed downstairs, gripping the railing. He was damn convincing as the distraught spouse. At a gut level, I believed him. I had to think about the rest of it, however, that he and Mara Quida had no children. He was his wife’s sole heir.

Lukas had a lot to gain if she died.

***

The desert night drowsed with a crystalline purity of air. I stood outside the mansion, one of the last people to leave after the gala. A few light globes floated off to the right, above a patio the guests had deserted hours ago. I walked along a path paved with blue stones. Lawns dotted with tiny white flowers lay on either side and the delicate scent of night-blooming jaz filled the air. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the gardens; I just knew too well the other side of that tender beauty. Except for the jaz, everything else growing here came from offworld. Native plants were spiky and tough, better suited for desert survival than making gardens pretty.

I pulled up the shoulder strap of my dress. The blasted thing kept slipping down my arm. Max, I thought. Have the city transport authority send a flyer. It would be good to get home and take off this outfit.

Done, Max answered.

I headed for the curving driveway about a kilometer from the house, where I could meet the flyer. Silence surrounded me; not only was the Quida mansion on the outskirts of Cries, but sound dampeners also muted the hum of the city.

I stumbled on a rock in the path and caught myself. Damn heels. Damn dress.

You wear them well. Max supposedly didn’t have emotions, but his amusement was all too realistic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many men try to pick you up before. Or women.

I’d never gotten used to the way upper-crust types found me sexy in what one fellow called an “untamed way.” I stopped and pulled off my heels. Holding them in my hand, I continued in bare feet. Max, you need to learn some new idioms. English has some good ones.

Why ever would I need to learn English idioms?

This one: Silence is golden. Especially from EIs who find my sex life so amusing.

I am an EI assistant. I don’t experience amusement. He didn’t sound one whit less amused.

I stopped, distracted. The silence was too golden here at the mansion. Concentrating, I trying to pick up a sound. Any sound.

What’s wrong? Max asked.

Turn up my ear augs. Any good investigator had biomech augmentation, including enhancements to her ears, eyes, skeleton, and musculature. I’d received the basic combat mods when I enlisted, and an upgrade when I transitioned into the officer ranks. It was invaluable in my work, and I kept my system at the top of the game.

As Max activated my ear mods, sounds intensified, the scrape of leaves against leaves, a breeze whispering over the lawns, and the buzz of pico-ruziks, tiny flying reptiles that lived in the desert but sometimes wandered into city gardens. Normally my enhanced hearing was too intense to use for long, but tonight the gardens still seemed too quiet.

A faint clink came off to my left.

I dove into the garden and rolled, my legs tangling in my stupid dress. In that same instant, the lilies next to the path where I’d been standing lit up in the blast of a nail-laser.

Damn! I jumped to my feet and dropped my shoes. Grabbing my dress, I hiked it up to my hips, holding it with one hand while I sprinted through the garden, my stride stretched out to its full length. I clenched my little gold purse in my other hand, not because I liked little gold purses; I hated the things. But it contained useful stuff.

Combat mode toggled, Max thought. I’m activating your internal microfusion reactor.

Somewhere behind me, the garden hissed with a nail shot. I ran harder, doubling my speed. Rocks jabbed my calloused feet. As I dodged back and forth, a lawn at my side flared with another shot.

Max! With my free hand, I shook my purse open. Have the beetle shorten this damn dress.

A little green beetle bot zipped out of my purse. It extended its blades and proceeded to cut off the bottom half of my dress while I ran. Its AI managed to keep it from chopping me up, too, despite the way I bounced it around. Within seconds, I was running in a gold shift that fell around my hips in tatters. As I dodged onto a lawn, the dirt next to me hissed with a nail shot.

I sent a command to the beetle through my link to Max. Find out who is shooting at me.

The beetle whisked away into the night.

A public flyer is waiting for you on the driveway, Max thought.

Why hasn’t security kicked in? The city monitors should have whapped the shooter.

Someone must have deactivated security.

No shit. To block city security required a clearance higher than anyone in this investigation could claim—except for Colonel Lavinda Majda.

I ran out into the sweeping curve of the driveway. A silver flyer waited there. As I sprinted for it, darting back and forth, a nail shot exploded the ground. The hatch of the flyer snapped open and I threw myself inside.

“Get us out of here!” I yelled.

With my enhanced speed, it looked as if the pilot was moving in slow motion. To her credit, she took off without hesitation, the craft leaping into the air as the hatch snapped shut. I slid across the deck and plowed into a passenger seat.

Within moments we were above the city. As I pushed up on my hands and knees, the pilot looked back at me. “You pay now,” she said. “And you give me your clearance.”

Combat mode off, Max thought.

My sense of speed returned to normal. “Clearance for what?” I climbed into the passenger seat, doing my best to project a calm, civilized appearance. I doubted it worked, with my hair in a wild mess, my dress in tatters, and my breath coming in gasps.

“Hell if I know.” The pilot turned back to her controls. “You give me a reason why I should help a raggedy-assed woman running out of a mansion with people shooting at her.”

“Look at your screen.” Max would have already sent my ID, to pay for the transport.

A ping came from the cockpit. “Well, shit,” the pilot said. “Majda.”

As uncomfortable as I felt within the Majda realm of influence, I couldn’t deny that being on their payroll had advantages. “Take me to the city outskirts.” I gave her coordinates for the entrance to the Concourse, a great underground boulevard in the desert beyond the City of Cries. The Concourse was supposedly part of the Undercity, the ancient ruins that lay beneath the desert, but in reality it just served as a glitzy source of revenue for Cries. The true Undercity where I’d grown up existed far below the gleaming Concourse.

While the pilot brought the flyer around in a long arc, I pondered the Majdas. They had sent me to the gala and called me in on the investigation when Mara Quida disappeared. They were also the only ones who could have deactivated the city security monitors. Coincidence? I doubted it. I needed to find out what was up.

My life could depend on the answer.

Chapter II

I strode onto the main floor of the Black Mark casino. No one blinked at my ripped gold scrap of a dress. I fit right in. Holographic roulette wheels spun in the air above the tables, glowing in neon colors while patrons bet and lost. Other gamblers sat around tables in chairs with diamond accents. Dealers who were far too beautiful dealt them cards, cubes, spheres, disks, rods, or whatever game pieces the players wanted. The games were all holographic, run by the house. I mean seriously, who would bet on games of chance controlled by a house mesh system? It always beat you, unless it calculated it needed to let you win a few times to keep you coming back. In the end, you lost, lost, and lost again. You could lose your soul to the Black Mark if you weren’t careful.

A man in a silver shirt and tight black trousers lounged against a table, watching me. I ignored his predatory gaze. Yah, I recognized his arrogant body language, knew the aristocratic sheen of his glit-rags. He was probably among the wealthiest of the wealthy in Cries, illicitly coming to the Black Mark in the depths of the true Undercity. Sure, he had plenty to offer—gifts, drugs, and who knew what the hell else. I didn’t care. I stalked past him without a glance.

Someone caught my arm. I swung around, raising my fist, my adrenalin surging—and froze. A bar tender stood there. Her slinksuit showed more skin than it covered, her makeup glittered, and the holo-stars in her black hair sparkled.

“Eh.” I lowered my arm. I had no intention of slugging my best friend. “Dara.”

She pulled me over to the bar and spoke in the terse Undercity dialect. “What goes? You look ready to blow.”

“Need talk to Jak,” I said. “Fast.” He always had his ear tuned to the Undercity whisper mill. If any rumors were going around about what had happened at the gala, he’d know.

“I get. Stay here.” Dara sped off, soon lost amid the patrons and holos. Taking a deep breath, I leaned against the bar, surveying the clientele to see if their behavior offered any useful info they didn’t know they were revealing. I recognized a few guests from the gala, come here to slum it in the Undercity’s infamous den of vice. I watched them discreetly, but no one did anything interesting.

The other bartenders left me alone, though they did glance my way when they thought I didn’t notice. It would be all over the Undercity whisper mill tomorrow: Bhaaj showed up at the casino dressed like a blitzed out city slick instead of like Bhaaj.

A group of slicks wandered over to me, two men and two women, all dressed in scraps of metallic cloth that covered almost none of their bodies. They looked like cyb-fibs, a weird trend among the wealthy in Cries, pretending they were machines rather than people. One of the men had a gold face, and the woman with him had eyes the color of polished titanium coins. The other woman had a cybernetic arm that glowed with tech-mech. It looked like solid gold, but more likely it used some hardened alloy that wouldn’t dent. The second man had implants in his ears that flashed in light patterns I knew were supposed to make me dizzy. They didn’t have the intended effect any more than the swirling holos in the casino could entice me to gamble. I’d never been particularly susceptible to suggestion, and the biomech in my body further blocked the effects.

The man with ear implants leaned against the bar next to me and gave me a once over, letting his gaze linger on my body. I felt like punching him. He leaned in closer, bringing his lips to my ear, and spoke in the Cries dialect. “You’ve good cyb. I’ve got better. Try it out.”

“Fuck off,” I said, ever the epitome of tact. I didn’t have to act civilized at the Black Mark, and after some city slick had just tried to kill me, I had no intention of pretending otherwise.

The woman with the cyber-arm laughed at her friend as she tilted her head at me. “You won’t get honey from that kit.”

Kit my ass. I might look young, but I was probably twice their age.

The man took my arm. “Your accent is undercity. You’re a dust rat, aren’t you?”

I twisted out of his grip and pulled his arm behind his back while I swung him around. “Touch me again, asshole,” I said in a perfect Cries accent, “and I’ll break your elbow.”

“Hey!” The woman with the cyber-arm pulled him free. “Get your respect together, rat,” she snapped at me. “Or you’ll regret it.”

She had that tone I hated. I tensed, my fist clenching—

Bhaaj, stand down, Max thought. Let it go.

I took a deep breath and stepped back from the group. “Not interested.”

“He didn’t ask if you were interested,” Cyber-arm said.

The other woman shook her head at her friend, probably her equivalent of Max telling me to stand down. To me, she said, “Your loss.”

Ear-plants looked me over avidly. “You got pump,” he told me, whatever that meant. He sounded like he intended it as a compliment. “Come with us. We’ll make it worth your time.”

“Seriously?” He thought I’d go with them for gifts? I probably had more wealth than the four of them combined. After living the first sixteen years of my life in poverty and then twenty years in the austere life of the Pharaoh’s Army, I saved my earnings with an obsessive intensity these slicks would probably never understand, given the gilded life they most likely took for granted. I was annoyed enough, though, that I couldn’t resist baiting him. “Worth my time how?”

“What do you want?” He sounded sure of himself again, in familiar territory, offering to buy whatever took his fancy. “Credits, jewelry, hack, bliss. You name it.”

Bhaaj, cut it out, Max thought. Leave them alone.

Oh, all right. “Sorry,” I told Ear-plants. “Not interested.”

“You won’t find better,” he told me. “I mean it. Whatever you want.”

A dark voice spoke behind me, sensuous and smooth, but with a steely undertone of eagerness that said, push me, go ahead, see what happens. “She already has everything she needs.”

Their gazes shifted to a point beyond my shoulder—and they froze. I turned. A man stood there, tall and leanly muscled, dressed in black, from his sleeveless muscle shirt to his rough trousers to his thousand-credit belt. An old scar stretched down his cheek that he’d never bothered to get fixed, and a gnarled scar snaked across his left bicep. Violence simmered in his gaze. He was menace and sexuality incarnate, with the face of a threatening god and the aura of a man who’d earned his wealth from the dark side of human nature.

Jak had arrived.

He spoke to the cyb-fibs in a terrifyingly pleasant voice. “I see you met my wife.”

His wife? Where the bloody hell did that come from?

Ear-implants looked ready to shit platinum bricks. “My apology sir. We meant no offense. We were just leaving.”

“Yes, just leaving.” Cyber-arm spoke fast, stepping back.

“You’re welcome to keep enjoying my establishment.” Jak was practically purring. He lifted his hand, indicating the worst of his rigged roulette wheels. “Please. Be my guest.”

The cyb-fibs all bowed to him, I mean, bowed, for freaking sake, after which they made a fast retreat, heading off to his tables to lose more money and make him happy.

I swung around to him. “Your wife? Fuck that, Jak.”

A slow, drowsy smile spread across his face. “Yah, Bhaajo, sure.”

I strode past him, headed for the back of the room, to a discreet stairway without any gleams or glitz. I didn’t look back as I went up the stairs. Holos activated in front of me, just enough to light the way, and then went dark after I passed. I headed into the secret depths of the casino owned by Mean Lean Jak, the most notorious criminal kingpin in the Undercity.

***

Jak leaned against the wall of his office, a darker shadow against its ebony surface. Diamonds glittered on bowls in niches in the walls, on the black furniture, and dusted across the plush black rug. Tendrils of smoke curled up from the bowls, scenting the air with carmina, a euphoriant that could make you feel as if you were drifting in clouds of pleasure. The nanomeds in my body were working overtime to keep me from having fun, because I felt no effect of the drug. I didn’t have Max tell them to stop, though. I needed my wits tonight.

“Someone tried to shoot you?” he asked. “I thought these people hired you to protect them. Why kill you?”

I paced back and forth, unable to stay still. “Fuck if I know.”

Bhaaj, Max thought. You’re doing it again.

Doing what?

Cursing.

So fucking what?

You asked me to stop you.

I wanted to use my choicest language to let him know just what I thought of that, but I held back. I had indeed asked him to help me clean up my act, at least with my elite clients.

This is Jak, I thought. He’s smooth.

You said you wanted to break the habit. That means with everyone.

Yah, well, not tonight.

At least come up with something more original. He sounded amused again.

Max, go away. I walked over to Jak. “I got a new job. Find a missing glitz. Scorpio.”

He looked suitably intrigued. “When she’d vanish?”

“Tonight.” I banged my fist on my thigh. “We got no record. Zill, zilch, zig. Glit-flit is just gone. I searched, checked, talked to guests. Then I left. That’s when the shooter tried to nail me.”

“Where?”

“Garden. Glit-flit’s digs.” I lifted my hands, then dropped them. “Why nail me?”

“Easy to see why.” Jak waved his hand as if to encompass more than the room. “The Undercity. You know it. All of it. Like no city slick.”

He had a point; I alone of the Quida investigators could reach the true Undercity. No one from Cries could enter these ruins without one of our dust gangs escorting them, to keep their wealthy butts from getting mugged or worse. Sure, some city dwellers knew about Jak’s casino; it was the one place in the Undercity that slicks could visit. But they couldn’t do it by themselves. Jak required any outsider coming to or leaving his establishment to wear sight and sound canceling goggles. They went blind and deaf. If they refused, no one would bring them to his elusive casino.

Nor could city monitors detect us in the Undercity. Our cyber-riders hid our community with shrouds that Cries engineers couldn’t even understand, let alone defeat. If Cries tried to raid the Undercity, our population would retreat deeper into the endless ruins that honeycombed the ground below the desert. With enough resources, the authorities would eventually find some of us, but to what point? They had little interest in our world.

Until two years ago.

That was when the army discovered we had something they coveted—the highest concentration of empaths in the Imperialate. No one knew that little gem of data, though, except for a few highly placed officials. I doubted anyone at the Quida gala fell into that select group. Although I didn’t think any of them knew I came from the Undercity, I made no secret of my history. Did my ability to come and go here threaten whoever had taken Mara Quida?

Max, I thought. Find out if any of the other investigators were attacked tonight.

Will do, Max answered.

I considered Jak. “You hear anything tonight about missing city slicks?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “I’ll keep an ear to the whisper mill.”

I nodded, deep in thought, walking back and forth.

Jak watched me. “Stay tonight. Relax.”

I went over to him. “Think you can settle me down, eh?”

He laughed, not with the menace everyone knew, but a deep, hearty laugh he showed no one else, a sound I’d loved since I first met him, when we were both three years old. “Yah, Bhaaj,” he murmured. “I can settle you down.”

I felt like poking his chest and saying he wasn’t my husband. I mean, where the hell had that come from? Oh, I knew, he wanted to have fun with the city slicks. Maybe we were even married by common law. But of course we never discussed it. Marriage was a custom for the wealthy in Cries. Although my people did form bonds by a ceremony we called handfasting, Jak and I had never bothered. We knew what we had. I had to admit, though, if one of us ever did propose, he had chosen a dynamite way, pissing me off and making me want to laugh at the same time.

I smiled, a genuine smile, as rare from me as from anyone else in the Undercity. “Yah. I should stay.” I never gambled here at Jak’s casino. I knew all too well how he fixed the games.

The Black Mark, however, offered better reasons for me to stay the night.

***

I sat sprawled in a chair in the sunken living room of my penthouse, my legs stretched across the floor and light pouring in the window-wall. Outside, far below the tower, the panoramic view of the Vanished Sea Desert spread to the horizon. Inside, the white carpet shimmered with a glossy finish that was actually a holoscreen. Currently, a holographic replica of the Quida mansion filled the room. The images came from Max’s recordings and the police analysis Talon had finally sent me. The scene looked the same as I remembered from last night.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Still no ransom demand?”

“Not a word.” Max spoke using the comm in my wrist gauntlets. I preferred talking when we were alone. Of course, that was only after I’d deactivated any nosy Majda tech trying to watch the penthouse. It was the price I paid for accepting this gorgeous place; it belonged to the Majdas, so it included their security monitors. Fortunately, I was better at outwitting their spy tech than it was at spying on me.

“Maybe Mara Quida went offworld,” I said.

“Not according to any flight record I’ve found,” Max said. “The police, Majda security, and Scorpio Corporation also did checks, not just of who bought tickets or boarded ships, but also a visual analysis of every passenger on any flight.”

“With her resources, she could have paid for anonymity.”

“For what purpose? She had every reason to stay.”

It certainly looked that way. Last night should have been a coup for Mara Quida. I got up and walked over to the holo of the crumpled scroll. “The negotiations were finished, right? Quida had already finalized the Metropoli deal.”

“That’s right. The contracts have been signed and processed.”

I passed my hand through the holographic scroll. “Her disappearance could make Metropoli doubt Scorpio Corporation, maybe even spur them to question the contract.”

“According to every report I’ve received or intercepted, the deal is proceeding as planned.”

Intercepted. That sounded like Max-speak for cracking other people’s secured systems. “Anything from the beetle bot I sent after whoever tried to shoot me last night?”

“Nothing yet. Wherever it went, it’s either out of my range or shrouding its systems.”

I noticed he left out the other possibility, that the shooter had caught or destroyed my bot. I scowled. I liked that little beetle. “Let me know when you make contact.” I paced through the holos as if they were ghosts. “Do you think Lukas Quida killed her? He inherits everything, all her assets, connections, real estate, even her place on the Scorpio board of directors.”

“He is the obvious choice,” Max said. “Maybe too obvious. Several hundred people saw him at the gala before, during, and after her disappearance.”

“Yah, well, he could have hired someone to whack her.”

“True. But why be so obvious about it?”

“Maybe that’s the point. Make it look absurd to suspect him.”

“No body has been found,” Max reminded me. “We don’t know she is dead.”

“I hope not.” Her husband had seemed genuinely agonized last night. He didn’t strike me as a good suspect, but I did have some questions. “Set up a meeting with Lukas Quida later today.”

“What about your appointment at the Veterans Administration?”

I stopped pacing. “What appointment?”

“With Adept Sanva.”

“Oh, that.” I shifted my weight. “Reschedule it.”

“You’ve already rescheduled twice.”

I went to the wall console and smacked my palm against a panel. The holos in my living room disappeared like an Undercity thief evading the cops. It left me surrounded by the elegance of a penthouse I never would have chosen myself, as much as I liked it. I’d always felt like a visitor here, never truly at home.

“Bhaaj?” Max asked.

“What?”

“You should go to your appointment with Adept Sanva.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t, you’ll be angry at yourself.”

What, now my EI was analyzing me? “You’re a biomech brain, Max. Not a psychologist.”

“I have entire libraries dedicated to psychology. I also have many years as your EI. I know you.”

Great. My EI was pulling the I know you card. Even worse, he was probably right. His brain evolved as we interacted, and after more than ten years together, it did sometimes seem like he knew me better than I knew myself.

“All right,” I grumbled. “I’ll go see Sanva. But get the meeting with Lukas, too. I want to talk to him as soon as possible.”

***

The Veterans Administration stood in the Commodore’s Plaza in Cries. All the buildings here served the army, fronting on an open area paved in white and blue stones. A fountain in the center showed the ancient goddess of war with her wings spread and her head tilted back as she blew into a battle horn. Water spumed out of the horn into the air and cascaded down her body in glistening drops.

It never ceased to amaze me what people in Cries took for granted. We lived on a dying world where the seas had dried up ages ago. Raylicon had no surface water; you had to dig deep to find it even here in the north, the most livable area of the planet. Deadly chemicals poisoned the water, making purification plants the most lucrative business on the world. In the Undercity, we had several grottos, even an underground lake, but none of those contained drinkable water. To survive, we scrapped together filtration machines and siphoned energy from Cries to run them. Yet this city boasted so much wealth, her people could waste water in a fountain that sprayed huge amounts of the life-saving liquid into the air. Cries probably even filtered it. No one wanted to get sued if someone drank from the fountain and ended up in the hospital or died.

I crossed the plaza to the VA building. In Cries, the army topped the city hierarchy, separate but equal to the corporate big dealers. The VA reflected that status, a tall building with displays on its outer walls showing confident soldiers in spotless fatigues, their heads lifted with pride. Too bad we’d never actually looked like that. Most of my time in combat, I’d been dusty, covered in mud, soaked to the bone, or drenched in sweat. Nanites in the cloth tried to clean our fatigues, which maybe helped boost morale, but it didn’t stop you from dying, both literally and emotionally, bit by bit, until you built so many defenses, you became numb.

Inside the VA, I found a lobby with consoles at chest height. Benches lined the walls and four people sat on them, two women and two men, all looking bored. They were like the soldiers I’d enlisted with. Like me. None of us had been considered officer material. Many of the higher-ups hadn’t believed I’d survive basic training. A dust rat? Ludicrous. My response had been Just watch me. I refused to give up, and eventually I’d made the supposedly impossible leap to the officer ranks. The army used my skills well, putting me on task forces to solve problems in weapons and strategy. I retired after twenty years and became a PI, intrigued by the idea of solving problems for a living. But I never forgot where I came from, below the city.

I stood at a console and pressed my finger against the screen.

“Name and rank?” the console asked.

“Major Bhaajan, retired. I have an appointment with Adept Sanva.”

“ID verified.” A holo flashed, the Majda insignia, a hawk soaring through the sky. It vanished as fast as it came. Huh. It looked like the console had flagged me as a Majda employee.

“An escort will be out to take you to your appointment,” the screen said.

I glanced toward the bored vets waiting their turn. “Other people are ahead of me.”

The screen didn’t answer, probably since I hadn’t asked a question, or maybe it just found my comment irrelevant. I scowled, then stalked over to the bench and sat down with the others.

A man in fatigues walked under the archway across the room and headed in my direction. He looked like the people in the images on the walls, perfect and professional. He stopped in front of me. “Welcome, Major Bhaajan.” Lifting his hand, he invited me to follow him. “This way please.”

I motioned toward the other people, who were watching with varying degrees of irritation and resignation. “They were here first.”

The man blinked, looking confused. “You are next.”

I didn’t want to give him a hard time. He was just doing his job, following orders and the city hierarchy. Apparently my Majda connection or my retired officer status put me on top of this little pecking order. Screw that. I’d spent a substantial portion of my life being treated as if I were less than nothing, and I wasn’t about to inflict that on other people.

“You can take them ahead of me,” I said. “I’ll wait my turn.”

He stood awkwardly, as if hoping I’d change my mind. When I stayed put, he left the room. One of the other vets nodded to me, the barest motion. Then we all went back to our boredom.

The console’s voice spoke in the air. “Sergeant Mazo, proceed to room fourteen for your appointment with Doctor Raven.”

A man stood and left the room through the archway. The rest of us continued to wait.

Eventually, after the other three people were called, the console announced my name, to meet Adept Sanva in room three. I headed for the archway, reminding myself I didn’t feel nervous about talking to a neurological adept. I normally had no problem with healers, including doctors who specialized in neuroscience and psychology. But she applied her training to empaths. Psions. Kyle operators. Whatever you called them, it meant the same thing. I had absolutely no desire to use my abilities as an empath. The last thing I wanted to experience was other people’s moods. Hell, I had enough trouble understanding my own emotions. I’d always suppressed my empathic ability.

It made survival easier.

***

Adept Sanva turned out to be an older woman with gray hair and an unlined face that suggested her body carried nanomeds to delay her aging. The large desk where she sat had glossy holoscreens for its surface. The room was airy, with flowering plants in pots and windows that let in sunlight.

Sanva looked up as I entered. “Welcome, Major.” She motioned to a smart-chair. “Make yourself comfortable.”

I sat down, about as comfortable as a sand-hawk caught in a prickle-pot.

She considered me. “I understand you would like to redo your Kyle tests.”

“Not exactly.” I didn’t want to answer. She was supposed to be an empath. She should know what I felt, right? Except it didn’t work that way. Everyone had natural barriers in their mind, and mine were stronger than most.

“Not exactly?” she prodded.

“The army tested me when I enlisted.” I pushed my hand through my hair, tousling the black mane around my shoulders. “They said I have zero Kyle ability.”

Sanva tapped her desk and hieroglyphics flowed across it in a glowing river of data. “Actually, it doesn’t say zero ability.” She looked up at me. “It says ‘none detected.’”

So yah, apparently “none detected” didn’t mean “no ability.” I’d never realized that until last year. “The Majdas believe my tests were wrong. They think I might be an empath. I want to find out if that’s true.” I didn’t really, but I’d hidden from this for too long. If I was even a marginal empath, it could be useful in my business, not to mention in life in general. Besides, it was ridiculous that I could be so good at solving other people’s mysteries and so bad at facing my own.

“Yes, they put a flag to that effect in your file.” She sat back in her chair. “Have you noticed anything to make you think they are correct?”

“Well, no.” That wasn’t a lie, not exactly.

Sanva waited. After a moment, I added, “I may have suppressed any ability because, uh—”

“Yes?”

“Because of my birth.” I felt stupid saying the words.

She regarded me curiously. “You can’t remember your birth.”

“Not literally.” I shifted my weight on her “smart” chair, which seemed pretty dumb. No matter how much it readjusted to make me more comfortable, nothing worked. “An EI helped me reconstruct the events and their implications.”

“And?”

“My mother died.” I spoke curtly. “It was in a cave. She bled to death. Apparently she was an empath. She tried to reach my mind, to comfort me while I cried. We made a link. When she died, I felt it. That left mental scars.” There. It was said. I waited.

Sanva stared at me. “You were born in a cave?”

That was all she got out of my miserable little story? Everyone in the Undercity lived in caves. Those homes could be works of art, but, yah, they were caves. The surprise wasn’t that my mother gave birth in one, but that it had been rough and cold, and she had been alone, with no help. I had no idea why, since no records existed of my father or other relatives.

“Yah,” I said coldly. “I was born in the Undercity.” She knew that. It was in my files.

“I didn’t realize the conditions.” She spoke in a gentle voice. “I could see how such an experience might damage your ability to make empathic connections.”

I took a moment to breathe. It wasn’t her fault that talking about this made me jittery. “I don’t know that I want to fix it. I’ve been fine. But it seems I should find out how it affected me.”

She touched her desk, bringing up a new display. “According to this, a recent medical exam picked up traces of the neural transmitter psiamine in your brain. Only psions produce psiamine, and only when they are using the Kyle structures in their cortex.”

“Does that mean I was, uh—feeling moods?”

“Possibly.” She spoke in a friendly manner. “Did you notice anything?”

“I’m not sure.” Her calm nature made her easier to deal with than I’d expected. “I mean, I’m good at reading people. You have to be, to survive in the Undercity. But it’s more reading body language, facial expressions, that sort of thing.”

“Have you ever heard someone else’s thoughts?”

“Just my EI. But that’s all tech.” Dryly I added, “That’s annoying enough.”

I am most certainly not annoying, Max thought.

Sanva read the data floating above her desk. “You have a biomech web in your body.” She looked up at me. “And a spinal node?”

“Not in my spine.” I raised my gauntleted wrist. “In here. When I click the gauntlet into my wrist sockets, it connects to my brain.”

She didn’t look surprised. “An ability to use that tech indicates your brain is well suited to the process. Not everyone can link with a neural EI. You may be drawing on the Kyle structures in your brain without realizing it.”

I hesitated. “There is one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“It’s just that—very rarely, I get flashes of, well, I don’t know what you’d call it.” I stopped, feeling stupid.

“Flashes of what?”

She was certainly patient, I’d give her that. “The glimpse of a possible future. It only lasts a few seconds.”

“Precognition?”

“I don’t know.” Gods, I sounded like an idiot.

“It’s rare.” She seemed intrigued, as if I were a puzzle. “More so than empathy. It’s due to the quantum uncertainty in time and energy. The better you know the energy of an event, the more uncertain the time.”

“Those are tiny uncertainties.” I’d had to take quantum engineering during college. “Way too small to notice on any human scale.” As small as Planck’s constant, which meant even our best instruments couldn’t measure the uncertainty in time.

“Yes, generally, that’s true,” she said. “But apparently for some people, the Kyle bodies in their brain interact in such a way to increase the temporal uncertainty.”

I grimaced. “Can you translate that?”

“Your brain increases the uncertainty enough for you to glimpse the future.” She spoke as if this were a perfectly natural event. “It’s one reason people experience déjà vu.”

It didn’t sound real, but then, up until a few years ago, I wouldn’t have expected to have this conversation at all. “Do you think it’s worth pursuing any of this?”

“That depends. Do you want to?”

Good question. I wanted to say no. I’d come here for help, though, and she couldn’t give it if I closed up like a water clam in the desert. I spoke awkwardly. “My people don’t talk about our emotions. But I can’t hide forever.” After a pause, I said, “So yes, I want to pursue it.”

“All right. We’ll see what we can do.” Sanva tapped another panel on her desk. “I’m sending you a file with some exercises. Try them. Let’s meet again in a few days.”

“Exercises?” How the blazes could you exercise being an empath?

“Just relax your mind for a start.”

“I’ll try.” I might as well. People were always telling me I needed to relax. I stood up. “Thanks.”

She stood as well. “Good luck, Major.”

I nodded. Then I escaped her office.

I walked out of the VA into a perfectly sunny day. We never had clouds unless we created them ourselves using weather machines. As someone who’d spent the first sixteen years of her life underground, I never stopped marveling at the open sky, the city towers reflecting its blue expanse—

A silver glint flashed in my side vision. I dove to the side, but not fast enough to avoid being hit. Pain flared in my chest as I smashed into the blue-tiled plaza.

***

Mist blurred my vision. Impossible mist. I groaned and rolled onto my back. The clear sky stretched above me. Someone was shouting. I tried lifting my arm—felt like lead—it dropped onto my chest. My palm squelched on wetness there.

Bhaaj, don’t move, Max thought. You’ve been hit by a knife. It tore an artery near your heart. I have contacted the hospital and summoned emergency med-bots.

Hurts…I couldn’t form coherent thoughts.

A man’s face came into view above me. He looked familiar.

“Major, we have help coming,” he said. “Stay here.”

Like I was going somewhere? I recognized him now; he was the well-meaning fellow who had offered to take me in to see Adept Sanva.

I closed my eyes and passed out…

***

“Stay put!” Doctor Raven looked ready to tie me to the hospital bed. “Major, if you don’t lie down, you’ll reopen your wound.”

I glowered at her from where I sat on the edge of the bed with my legs hanging nearly to the floor. “I’m fine,” I repeated.

“You aren’t even close to fine. You nearly died.”

“You fixed me up. Now I have business to attend.” Like finding the asshole who kept trying to kill me, and had nearly succeeded this time.

Raven crossed her arms. “You’re not going anywhere. And you have to talk to the police. Security from Scorpio Corporation wants to see you, too.” In a more subdued voice, she added, “Also Colonel Lavinda Majda.”

Well, good. “So go get them.”

She didn’t budge. “You woke up thirty minutes ago. You aren’t ready to see anyone.”

“You refusing Majda?” I was so annoyed with my enforced bed rest, I was even willing to invoke their name, which I normally avoided like indigestion.

She didn’t look the least intimidated. “Using the Majdas to get around me won’t work. If you’d like, I can contact their doctor.”

Well, damn. I knew the Majdas’ personal physician. She didn’t take shit from anyone, including me. “Fine,” I growled. “When can I see all these people?”

Raven lowered her arms. “I’d like you to rest for another few hours. I injected specialized nanomeds into your body. Give them time to repair your artery. I’ll check on you later this afternoon. If you’re healing well, you can talk to your visitors.”

A few hours. I supposed I could live with that. I felt more worn out than I wanted to admit. With a grunt, I lay on my back and stared at the sky-blue ceiling.

Rustles came from across the room as she did whatever doctors do when they check their machines to make sure you aren’t dying or misbehaving. Eventually her footsteps receded as she left the room, until only the distant hums and clicks of the hospital kept me company. I turned on my side and gazed at the landscapes glowing on the walls, images of the Vanished Sea. Eons ago, long before humans came to Raylicon, an ocean had filled that great basin. Another image showed the ruins of the alien starships that had brought our ancestors to Raylicon six thousand years ago. No one could visit those ships except the military and a few scientists cleared to study them. They’d sat in the harsh desert sun for millennia, all that remained of whoever stranded humans on this world.

I closed my eyes and drowsed, thinking about the ruins. My ancestors had built an interstellar civilization using the libraries on those ships, but their Ruby Empire had fallen thousands of years ago. In this modern age, an elected Assembly ruled the Imperialate; the Ruby Pharaoh’s position was only titular. She led the House of Skolia, just like the Majda Matriarch led the House of Majda, but she no longer ruled.

Except…

We called ourselves the Skolian Imperialate, not the Federated Worlds of Whatever. If it ever came to a challenge between the Assembly and the Ruby Dynasty, the military might well throw their formidable power behind the dynasty. The Pharaoh’s Army was its oldest branch, with six thousand years of fealty to the empire. And yah, many people still considered Skolia an empire, not a democracy. So sue us. The Majda Matriarch also served as General of the Pharaoh’s army, one of the four joint commanders of Imperial Space Command. That alone placed her among the Imperialate’s most forceful leaders…

Sometime later I became aware of someone watching me. I opened my eyes to find Jak sitting on a stool by the bed, his dark clothes and hair a sharp contrast to the sky-blue room.

“Eh,” I said.

“Eh, Bhaaj.” He was verbose today, using two words for his greeting.

“How’d you get in here?”

He shrugged. “Easy. Cyber-rider shroud.”

Ah, good. A well-constructed shroud could help hide him from monitors, including optical, ultraviolet, infrared, radar, microwave, and neutrino sensors. I used one when I went to the Undercity, to keep the Majdas or anyone else from spying on me. Shrouds that hid you that well tended to be military grade and not available to civilians. That never daunted our cyber-riders. They’d provide Jak with top-notch protection using smuggled parts and black-market tech.

“You got knifed.” Jak leaned forward. “Stupid. Almost dead stupid.”

I sat up, more startled that he called me stupid than annoyed. “Not stupid.”

“Walking in plain view.”

“City has defenses.”

“City has crap.”

Normally I’d have challenged him on that. Cries had military-grade defenses even for the civilian population. Not that I would call it a military state, because, you know, you didn’t say that, not where anyone could overhear. Besides, its wealthy population wanted protection even if it meant giving up some of their privacy. Yet despite all that, in the last day someone had twice nearly managed to kill me.

“Yah, stupid,” I decided. My attacker was smart. Too smart. No one could trick the defenses in Cries that well. They had to be part of the same security infrastructure they were outwitting, which placed them high in the city hierarchy.

“You need to be more careful.” Jak switched into the Cries dialect, which he always did when he wanted to stress a point with me. “Someone big is after you.”

“Someone in Scorpio security or the city police.”

“Or Majda.” His dark gaze simmered.

“Maybe.” I didn’t see why Majda would want me dead. Nor did murder seem like their style. They had more subtle ways to achieve their goals. I’d never met any other group so adept at doing whatever the hell they wanted without breaking laws, at least not in ways you could trace. “Scorpio seems more likely.”

“Police don’t like you, either.”

“Yah. But they wouldn’t throw knives. They’d shoot.”

He shook his head. “It’s easier to hide a knife from the city monitors.”

Doctor Raven’s voice came from across the room. “How the hell did you get in here?”

Jak looked past me and spoke in his deepest voice, a tone meant to sound pleasant, but that came across as menacing more than anything else. “My greetings, Doctor.”

I turned to see Raven walking toward us. She frowned at Jak. “You have to leave. The major is recuperating.”

Jak almost smiled. He didn’t, because he didn’t know her, but apparently he found the concept of me obediently lying here to recuperate funny enough that he stopped being irked at the doctor. “She’s too ornery to stay put.”

I scowled at him. “You heard her. Leave.”

He did smile then. “Go with care, Bhaaj.” With that, he vanished. Not literally; I could make out a slight ripple in the air in the shape of his body. He’d activated the holographic portion of his shroud, which used screens and tiny light sources in his clothes, and holo-dust on his skin, to project images of his surroundings. It showed realistic views of the room behind his body instead of him, so he seemed to disappear. The shroud had limitations, especially close up, but the farther away the viewer, the better the camouflage.

“What?” Doctor Raven blinked at the place where Jak had vanished.

“He does that sometimes,” I said.

She spoke wryly. “Major, you are not the world’s easiest patient.”

I could have told her that.

***

“I don’t know who threw the knife,” I repeated.

Detective Talon from Scorpio Security was recording my statement with her wrist-cam. She stood near my hospital bed where I sat with my legs dangling. Lavinda Majda had accompanied her. Although it made sense for Majda to check on me, given how much they paid for my services, I hadn’t expected Lavinda. She showed respect by coming here when she could have sent an underling. The colonel stood back in the room, tall and silent by the entrance arch. Gold mosaics bordered the doorway, another indication this was no ordinary hospital, but a high-end clinic.

“Then you didn’t see anyone?” Talon asked me.

“I didn’t have a chance,” I said. “I barely managed to dodge in time.”

“How did you know to dodge?” Talon frowned. “According to our footage of the incident, you had no warning.”

I’d wondered that myself. “I saw a flash.”

“No flash shows in our recordings.” From Talon’s suspicious tone, you’d have thought I was the criminal rather than the victim. “And yet somehow you threw yourself down in the exact moment your attacker threw the knife.”

I leaned forward. “I should be asking how someone got that close to me with a weapon.”

Talon’s expression turned bland. “That portion of the city is monitored by army security, not Scorpio Corporation.”

Lavinda came forward. “Our security didn’t pick up anyone with a knife.”

“Why not?” I asked—and immediately regretted my tone. My recuperating brain was worse off than I realized, because I’d just disrespected someone I admired. “Colonel, I apologize for my discourtesy. I didn’t mean to sound rude.”

Lavinda didn’t look offended. “You ask a good question. The knife should have set off warnings. Yet whoever threw it didn’t register on our monitors. We’re checking on it.”

“Has anyone else in the Quida investigation been attacked?” I asked.

“Only you,” Lavinda said. “We’ll get this figured out, Major.”

I nodded to her, and she inclined her head.

“We could get you a Scorpio bodyguard.” Talon spoke as if that idea smelled bad.

“Or a military escort,” Lavinda said.

“No, that’s all right. I’ll take precautions.” I was probably better at being a bodyguard than most anyone they could provide, besides which, it would hamper my investigation to have someone following me around. If I showed up in the Undercity with a bodyguard, no one would talk to me.

“Maybe you should leave the investigation to those of us trained for this,” Talon said.

Well, screw you too. I’d looked at her record. She didn’t even come close to my experience. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t like me nosing around her jurisdiction or she just plain disliked me. Lavinda was harder to read, but she should know I never backed down. It was one reason the Majdas hired me. I could be as tenacious as a byte-bull infecting a mesh system.

I said only, “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

Whoever tried to kill me had made this personal, and no way would I let that go.

**********************

"Well that's a lot to think about," Maya says.

"No food," he says. "I'm getting worried. And hungry. Are there any nuts leftt?"

"No, but there may be some cookies in the cafe," Maya says. "I can't wait for that to be published so I can read the rest of it."

"Yes, Asaro's still getting better with every book," he agrees. "But don't her characters ever eat?"

"Oh all right, let's read something else that might have breakfast in it. Or we could re-read A.E. Prevost's one with pancakes in it, the one that started with the word breakfast?"

"We can't eat the pancakes of yesteryear when we are them already," he says. "We need to move on. But we can. Fortunately, here's the beginning of a new Naomi Novik."

"Oh, terrific," Maya says. "I loved Spinning Silver. And it had great food too. Is this in that universe?"

"Mmm, yummy Eastern European Jewish food," he says, reminiscently. "No. This is a kind of dark Harry Potter. It's called A Deadly Education. But let's see what it has."