Hunters of the Deep mda-12 Read online

Discard.

  “Yes, Star Colonel, you may go.” She saluted smartly and turned to leave. In her haste to depart, she unstuck herself from her magnetic slips and vaulted toward the hatch and the waiting corridor beyond.

  He turned back to contemplate the simplicity of the solar sail. She had been useful in the past, despite the need to cast her aside. Her genes, of course, would be useful again in a future generation.

  “ovKhan.” The electronic voice echoed through the room. He moved toward the comm station at the side of the observation window and touched the flashing button.

  “ovKhan here.”

  “Farstar III has just materialized in-system, ovKhan. She sends word Delta Aimag has been located in the Adhafera system, in deep negotiations for the last week and more.”

  “Thank you.” Sha smiled slowly and casually rested his forehead against the ferroglass; the cold immediately sank teeth deep into his forehead. The time is coming, ovKhan Petr. We have swum the same currents for too long, too much wounding of flanks and butting of snouts in indecisive displays. Finally, the time has come to meet your fire with ice.

  It felt as though the cold was tearing chunks of flesh right from his skin, but Sha’s smile broadened.

  Cold always wins.

  9

  Marik Quarter, Halifax

  Vanderfox, Adhafera

  Prefecture VII, The Republic

  7 July 3134

  Even close to dusk, the yellow-white light beat down like the hand of an unmerciful god that would see Adhafera’s inhabitants dead before the blessed rains came. Staring up at the cobalt sky totally devoid of even a wispy hint of white, Petr found it hard to believe the locals were already preparing for the savage rainfalls they said would be arriving any day.

  Moving into the shade of an eave—he felt sure the hammer of light targeted his head with brutal and malicious efficiency—he watched an elderly woman across the street for a moment. She stooped to grasp an apparently light, yet unwieldy sheet, which she then heaved into place with a snap across the front window of her store; he’d heard it mentioned several times the wind could drive raindrops so hard they would break glass. The rainy season threatened, which is why the cattle slaughtering normally occurred at this time.

  Petr stepped away from the curb and began walking briskly down the street, still hoping to find Snow. And to bleed off anger; his temper flared again as he thought of the local merchants’ most recent behavior. Stupid spheroids. Didn’t matter that he moved among their worlds. He was trueborn bred and trained, and the spheroids’ ways might as well be alien intelligences for all he could understand them at times.

  They had a deal. How dared they back away at the last minute!

  He felt the lightest of brushes against his right elbow and immediately spun to the left, down and around into a defense crouch. He’d been downside on worlds that made him feel as though he moved in powered-down battle armor, their crushing gravities making even walking arduous. But on Adhafera, with its .77 standard Terran gravity, he could move almost as lithely as though still on the grav deck of his ship.

  The old lady he’d watched for a moment screeched and took several quick, mincing steps backward. Sha knew many Clansmen, especially those still confined within their occupation zones, who would be revolted by the skein of wrinkles that mapped her life in relief across her bronzed skin; Petr didn’t bat an eye, too accustomed to seeing this and worse in ports of call.

  Still, he couldn’t believe the audacity of this hag to touch his person, and the familiar warmth raced along his blood, setting off the dull thump that would soon soar to a roaring beat, the soft, tickling sensation on his skin that would eventually set him afire.

  “You got no right to frighten me so,” the hag scolded, speaking to him before he could begin to chastise her properly; her face wore the look of a sibko trainer about to berate an errant shiv. The beat in his ears grew by increments.

  “She tells me to tell you, that’s all. She gives me good C-bills, so I don’t mind. But I got work to do. With Pappy gone, I’m all the store’s got. So I didn’t see ya gawking and suddenly you’re walking like hell’s on your tail.”

  The internal heat grew as the brazen woman stepped a little closer and the musk of fresh soil and age, mixed with good clean sweat, sailed up his nostrils as he breathed deep to keep it under control. She began to shake a finger at him.

  “Then I come near to knocking myself off—ticker not so strong anymore—and then you leap about like some weasel and look like you gonna hit ol’ Timma.” She gummed her mouth several times; his lips curled at the dentures.

  “Don’t matter what that ugly women say to me, taking a message to you offworlders not worth the time to spit.”

  Frigid waters cascaded across his temper, sublimating it in a flash that almost stunned him; without conscious thought he stepped toward the woman and assumed his most disarming look, casually slouching his body to appear less threatening. “My good Timma, I must apologize for my actions. Where I hail from, we simply do not have the great spaces you enjoy in which to live. To work. As such, we are accustomed to not touching one another.” He broadened his smile, added a twinkle to his eye. “It’s a way to create artificial space where none really exists. You simply startled me.” Contractions were always a nice touch with spheroids.

  She cocked her head at him and gummed her upper lip several times; this close, he could see the fine dirt that filled most of her wrinkles; he suddenly felt she was a soil etching in need of a good dousing to reveal the true sculpture beneath. “You got no right, still, to be surprising me like that. Bang, could’ve been dead. Then how sorry you be?”

  Petr added a hint of sorrow to his features. A warrior on the field needed no such subterfuge, but this was a battlefield, if of a different sort, and like a heavy medium laser from his Tiburon, he would use whatever resources he found at hand. “Then I would hold your spirit on my conscience for all the days of my life. A specter to haunt my CargoShip.” A touch of a smile.

  She wrinkled her forehead even more—if that were possible—then burst into loud laughter. “That’s exactly what I be doing to you. You be careful, offworlder, or you have a flock of old women haunting your spaceship.”

  Petr bowed low to accept the rebuke; his eyes flashed once as they were hidden, returned to their charade by the time he finished the flourish. “Timma, you spoke of a message a woman gave you to pass on to a Sea Fox Clansman, quiaff?”

  “Don’t be knowing nothing about no kiaf, but this wasn’t for just any offworlder.”

  She stabbed a finger at him and almost touched his chest. Glad she didn’t; he would hate to slip and ruin what he had wrought.

  “She describe you down to the tip of those fancy space boot thingies you got. No doubt you the man.”

  “And this message? What is it?”

  “Just be glad Timma the forgiving type, or I be walking away. Can still feel the ticker a racing.”

  Please do not walk away. Had to keep this clean, especially after the negotiations became blocked; the coolness began to thaw.

  “She tell me to say to this offworlder—you, o’ course—to meet this woman (ugly!) at Dipson’s Five and Dime Diner.”

  Petr simply strode away, knowing exactly where to find the eating establishment—calling it such brought a sardonic smile. He didn’t look back once to see the gaping mouth of Timma, flabbergasted out of speech by the way Petr simply dropped her presence and sped away like demons from Hell snapped at his heels.

  It took him most of an hour to cross this portion of Halifax. They called it the Marik Quarter, but he could find no distinguishing characteristics—neither architecture, nor smell—to tell it apart from any other portion of the city. By the time he reached the diner, full dark quenched the light and cast up its own pale imitations; without the streetlights, he would have found the going difficult.

  Opening the door, he stepped in and for a moment wondered if the stench he sought to escape so many times at th
e Merchant House had found its way into this building as well, waiting to pounce upon him once more.

  Dim and dirty. Few occupants. It fit the image he had carefully crafted of Snow over the last few weeks. A cockroach would revel here and so would she.

  He moved away from the door, weaving in and out of aisles of chairs sitting askew, his boots conveying the squelch and smack of every puddle of liquid—the aroma told him some of them were not just spilled alcohol—and morsels of soggy food. Though several people raised their heads, most were too drunk to give him more than a passing glance. The one or two whose eyes actually quickened at the realization a Sea Fox strode among them quickly resumed their previous postures as his blazing eyes swept the room and turned any interest to ash. The anger stirred, roared; he should be glowing, his skin an incandescent covering to the blazing furnace within.

  Toward the back, he spotted her and stopped dead. She sat unconcernedly, a stoop to her posture, as she gazed at a wilted and wrinkled menu. Her left hand strayed to her mouth and she bit absentmindedly at a nail and casually spit it out the side of her mouth. Her swarthy skin blended into her short, hacked-off hair, and with a side profile, her bulbous nose appeared to swell out like the snout of an ice hellion; would she be as whiny and backbiting as that dead Clan? Her stocky body and shabby clothing (a mix of several shapes and colors Petr felt sure she stripped off some street itinerate) plunged a spike of physical loathing through his rage.

  Such an abomination would’ve been terminated by the scientist caste overseeing the birth before the mother carried it to term. He didn’t even think of the trueborn possibilities, confident such a creature could never have flowed from the Clan’s iron womb program. On the verge of turning away, he remembered the data cube tucked into his pocket. The image of those smoky eyes. She managed to place it on his ship; he must give her credit for such a feat. He could stomach her presence long enough to find out if her message held merit, or whether he could give in to his desire to wrap that stump of a neck with his hands.

  He moved to the booth and slid in.

  “Took you long enough. Get lost?” Her voice came out deep and husky, not completely unattractive. “Haven’t had somebody staring that hard at me since Jack Rilley used to peek in at me when I took a shower.” She casually chewed off another nail, spit it out and then glanced up; the merriment they held almost redded out Petr’s vision and he gripped his thighs to keep from reaching across the table. “’Course, I looked a whole lot better back then, so don’t know why you’re staring. But hey, if you’re in to me, you are. Nothing I can do about it. Right?”

  She is trying to provoke me. The voice came as though stretched and thinned by an endless haze of gore and shimmering heat. He breathed in deeply, hunting for scents, trying to regain his focus. He expected a foul miasma to match the reek of this place and instead detected the scent of flowers. A soft, herbal scent totally incongruous with her appearance. She is playing with you. The voice gained strength and his vision began to clear. It is a facade. If she is good enough to seed a message on your ship, she is good enough to play you like a harp.

  “Waiter,” he abruptly called in a loud voice.

  She quirked her mouth and leaned back.

  His eyes began to pick out details he missed the first time, and the rage began to return, but this time directed inward. She may have been on-world this entire time and simply waited in order to throw you off balance. The first move perhaps went her way, but no more. She slouched against the back of her chair, but did so a little too carefully. As though to keep her right shoulder at just the right angle—for what? Was she carrying? Did it matter? She did not bring him all this way to kill him.

  “So, with those steaming eyes of yours, I think I’ll call you sweetness. Practically got engaged.” She smiled, and her almost-too-white teeth gleamed in the dim light like the dials of his ’Mech’s cockpit console glowed at night.

  His normal response to any such advances would have been vehement revulsion, but he could not afford that luxury here. It put him off balance. Off guard. He gripped his thighs hard as he tried to roll with it.

  “Got something going on under the table, do you?” she said, her voice dropping to a sultry timbre; she leaned forward and tapped her hand on the table several times, her index finger pointing toward his arms. “Those biceps are filling your suit real nice and, well, can’t help but wonder if we shouldn’t be moving right to the wedding day.” The smoky gray eyes almost gleamed in the darkness, her soft voice and words at total contrast with her repellent physicality. He couldn’t seem to pull himself together.

  The waiter arrived. A scrawny teenage boy with a runny nose, peach fuzz on his lip that he no doubt doted over, and a greasy apron. “What ya ordering?” He didn’t look up; he’d learned to not get involved.

  Snow leaned back again, still with the stiffness around her shoulders, and waved a hand in his direction. “You’re the one who thinks we’re on a date, so you can order for me.”

  “I am not hungry,” he responded gracelessly and berated himself again. How did she manage to keep him off his guard? He was surprised in the street by the hag and yet responded instantly with his usual zeal and effectiveness in negotiations. This encounter was quickly shaping up to be a disaster.

  “Oh, straight to bed, then?”

  He couldn’t help but stare. Was she actually coming on to him? The silence stretched and he could see the skinny brat actually glance up and begin to turn away.

  “Twin beers. Anything.” He looked a question at her.

  “Fine. Sure. If you want to get me drunk, I’m all for it.” She laughed out loud and several people from two and three tables away glanced in their direction.

  He spoke immediately once the waiter departed. “You should not be so loud. Do you wish to draw others’ attention?”

  “Why not? Only if we skulk and hide in the corner could we possibly be doing something we shouldn’t. Even if it is exceptionally strange for an offworlder—much less a Sea Fox—to come, at night, to such a seedy bar in his uniform [ no doubt of the sarcasm there ], if she’s loudmouthed and it looks like he’s simply got strange taste on local women, why should they care?” She smiled, and for the first time, he caught a glimpse of her real smile; the warmth surprised him, but the wariness remained.

  He savagely dug his fingers into his thighs one last time, for the final point he gave up, and moved his hands to the tabletop.

  “That’s better,” she said immediately and chewed on another nail. “This may be a little seedy, but it’s a family establishment after all.”

  “Must you always speak with sarcasm?”

  “Are you kidding?” She laughed. “I’m not sure I could complete a sentence without it.”

  “Perhaps you should try. Explain why you brought me here.”

  “Did I bring you here?” The laughing tone of voice fired his ire once more.

  The skinny waiter thumped down two beers and Petr gaped as, before the waiter took five steps, Snow slammed back the beer, draining the bottle quicker than the collapse of a compartment to decompression.

  “Keep ’em coming!” she bellowed, and the waiter partially raised a hand, but continued away.

  “Hey, I’m a thirsty gal. Work’s been hard of late,” she said when she noticed Petr’s surprise.

  “You did bring me here.” He took out the data cube and carefully placed it on the table. He almost winced when he saw how much his constant rubbing, the nervous tick of his anger, had worn it down.

  “My, my, my,” she said, looking at the cube and then turning those searchlight eyes on him once more. “Seems I should’ve brought a bouquet. You were anxious, weren’t you?”

  Petr ignored the comment. “Why?”

  “Ah, left at the altar again. Well, I’ve come to expect it. You’ve got some pretty Foxer you’re bedding, right? No place in your life for little ol’ Snow.”

  He slapped his hand on the table and ignored the curious looks from around
the room at the gunshot sound. “Snow,” he ground out, trying to keep a rein on his temper, “I do not have time for this. You managed to get this cube on my ship, which I am sure you know is the only reason I’m here.”

  She placed her hand gently on the table, as though to mock his own brutal impact, and laughed quietly. “Ah, now you’re starting to use vulgarity with me. If you’re going to leave me at the altar, the least you could do is not argue with me. That’s for married folks.”

  Petr trembled and his eyes flashed red. He closed them; he would not react. Would not!

  “Okay, okay,” she said.

  He opened his eyes to find her face slightly altered. He could not put a finger on it, but something had changed.

  “Yeah, I brought you here. I’ve got some news I know you’ll find interesting.”

  “How?”

  “Because you’re Sea Fox. You keep your fingers in every pot you can.” Her right hand dipped below the table and reappeared with a new data cube, which she placed on the table and lightly flicked with her index finger. It sailed smoothly across the surface—a testament to the permanent grease ingrained in the fake-wood top—and Petr closed his hand over it.

  He gritted his teeth. “I hope this one provides more information than the last.”

  “Hey, I couldn’t tell you everything right off the bat, sweetness. And I did get you here.”

  He could only nod his head. Too many points to her this round. This round.

  “What will I find on this?”

  For once she did lower her voice and casually lift the new beer the waiter had dropped off only moments before. “Information about the imminent invasion of this part of The Republic of the Sphere by the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth.”

  Petr stared at her, incredulous. This was her vital message? He’d be angry if he didn’t find the situation so ludicrous. He laughed out loud. “This is your urgent news? Please!” Petr slid across the bench to stand.

  Snow quickly leaned forward and something flashed through her eyes. “Listen, I know why you’ve come to this Prefecture. And an invasion could either ruin it, or for those who know it’s coming, they might just make huge profits off events to come.”