Hostile legacy, p.9
Hostile Legacy, page 9
part #2 of Afterwar Saga Series
And then there was a thud on the door to the shop. A woman’s voice begged to be allowed entry. “Please.” Her voice was a ragged whisper like she didn’t want to draw attention but was desperate for salvation.
“We’ve got to help her,” I said, pulling out my pistol.
“We cannot,” the shopkeeper said, placing herself in front of the door’s controls. “We could all die.”
“Lock yourself in back,” I growled.
If I’d learned one thing from my parents, it was that people either stood together or they died alone. I pushed her from the controls and instructed the door to open. Where it had crashed to the floor in less than a couple of seconds, it was agonizingly slow at opening. As it rolled up, I saw the hem of a robe.
The woman on the other side of the door must have felt the door opening because she dropped to the ground. Reaching into the shop on hands and knees she tried to crawl to safety. I dropped to my knees to help and reached for her arm. I got only the barest glimpse of her face when her eyes flew open in horror. She was violently yanked away from the doorway, her wrist slipping through my hand, pulling my chest into the door with a smack.
I shook off the momentary stun and picked up my pistol, rolling onto the ground, searching first for the woman and second for a target. Laser blaster fire concentrated on the beautiful window Addy and I had only forty minutes ago been staring out, appreciating the grand vista. The only thing I heard now was the woman’s screams floating to my ears, only to be cut off a moment later.
9
NO GOOD DEED
Wildly, I looked for more danger. Addy came to my side and together we scanned what my AI informed me was called Merchant Road. I saw robed men wielding long blaster rifles racing down the stairs. They took stock of Addy and me but gave us little attention as they raced to the window where the woman had been taken out. Addy and I joined them, but there was nothing to see beyond the scorch marks of blaster bolts missing their marks.
“You should not be here.” The man who spoke had dark, olive-complected skin, black hair, and piercing blue eyes. For a moment, I thought his eyes had the telltale glow of Iskstar, but pushed away the notion as I studied him.
“What attacked us? Was it human?” Addy asked breathily. I was proud to see she’d concealed a light blaster – something I hadn’t noticed.
“These are not questions for a visitor,” the man said brusquely. “If you hear the alarm, find shelter or you will not be so lucky the next time.”
“How often do these attacks happen?” I asked.
The man made an annoyed, go-away gesture and walked off, saying something in a language that neither I nor my AI had any knowledge of.
“I guess he didn’t feel like talking,” Addy said, irritated. “What could pull a woman through a window like that?”
I crawled onto the window ledge and leaned outlooking down the sheer rock face. I couldn’t imagine someone or something using it to move. A person could have used anti-gravity devices to achieve a similar result. My eyes caught a spray of red on the wall. I couldn’t be sure it was blood, but now that image occupied the same space in my mind as the woman’s face contorted with fear.
Safe?
Climbing back in off the window ledge, I saw the retreating off-white robes of those who’d carried the long blaster rifles and defended the city from whatever the menace had been. I wasn’t quite as trusting that things were over and guided Addy back across the main drag to the shop where we’d momentarily holed up. Not unexpectedly, the door was closed.
“Addy, talk to me,” Olivia said. It occurred to me that I hadn’t answered her query.
“It’s over Liv. We’re okay,” Addy said.
“What happened?” Cassius asked.
“Some sort of attack,” I said. “It took a woman.”
“Do you need help? Is she dead?” he asked. “They won’t let us out without the all-clear signal.”
“She was taken,” Addy said and then tentatively added. “Out one of the big windows.”
This brought more questions that I wasn’t able to focus on. Men and women appeared from the topside. They were understandably cautious. I searched their faces but none looked like the group of three who’d chased after whatever had taken the woman. Perhaps even more notable were the shorter, heavier automatic weapons they favored. It was a lot of hardware.
“Quinn?” Addy asked, touching my arm to get my attention.
I turned and tried to focus on her. The trio we’d met weren’t from Stoneville. This is the point where you realize I’m not very good at multitasking. With that revelation processed, I found that I could give Addy my full attention.
“Hey, I’m here,” I said softly.
“Are you sure?” she asked, staring intently at me, her upturned face searching my own.
“Whatever attacked wasn’t human,” I said over comms. “Stoneville’s guards are armed with heavy automatic weapons but they’re not making it work.”
“Do you think it’s Kroerak?” Cassius fired back.
“No way,” I said. “The queen was killed, and their home planet destroyed. It’s something else. Besides, Kroerak stand and deliver, only leaving once they’ve killed everything moving. This attack was a hit and run.”
Three long blasts of an airhorn were muted by my suit’s helmet. In response, doors to the shops along Merchant Road started opening. The clothing shop where we’d taken cover was one of the last to do so. I suspected I’d worn out whatever welcome we’d had.
Addy must have seen it that way too. “Go find Liv and Cass. I’ll get the robes,” she said.
I nodded and walked in Liv’s direction.
“You’re one crazy dude,” Cassius said when we met up. “The people around us said it’s suicide to be in the open during an attack. Did you get a look at whatever it was? They wouldn’t talk about it other than to say it was dumb to be caught in the open.”
“No, but it moved fast,” I said. “It carried a woman twenty meters in the time it took me to roll under a door and get to my feet, although, to be fair, I had no idea it was making for a window, so it could have gotten out while I was looking in another direction.”
“We have company,” Olivia said, nodding behind me.
I still held the light blaster in my hand and as I turned, I recognized the man’s air of authority if not the markings on the sleeves of his robe. I holstered my weapon.
“I don’t know who you are or what you think you were doing,” the man said. “When we’re under lockdown, it’s an imprisonable offense to break that cover. Turn over your weapon and come with me.”
“Hold on,” Cassius said, stepping forward. His size more than his action caused two more similarly uniformed men to move in our direction.
“It’s okay, Cass,” I flipped my pistol from its holster and held it out butt first to the man. “We’ll get this worked out.”
“Is there a problem, Sergeant?”
“Is there?” the first man asked, looking at Cassius pointedly.
“No,” Cassius said, his chest deflating. I loved his stalwart friendship but tensions in Stoneville were high, and we didn’t need to make enemies of their security forces.
The sergeant took my weapon and turned me around with more force than I thought necessary, zipping flexible cuffs onto my wrists.
“Where are you taking him?” Olivia asked neutrally.
“The security office is on The Mercantile,” he said. “We’re not hard to find.”
“I’m sure we’ll get this worked out, Cass,” I said, seeing his concern. “Get Bandit settled.”
Instead of going up the grand staircase, Sergeant Happy, the name I’d given him, perp-walked me down the length of Merchant Road and into a large elevator that took us topside. My sense of direction was challenged, but I believed we’d come out on the northeast of the permanent buildings of the Mercantile, under the big sail.
Like Merchant’s Road below, the building below The Mercantile’s large sail was carved from stone. The suite we entered looked like every other from the outside. Inside, there was a counter behind which a uniformed woman stood.
“Got a code forty-five,” Sergeant Happy grumbled, pushing me toward the counter.
“Are you serious, Jotal?”
“Just doing my job, Rasha. Why don’t you do yours.”
Rasha raised her eyebrows. “Name?”
“Quinn Hoffen,” I said, setting my hand on a scanner. I wondered what kind of trouble not being in their systems would cause.
“You have him?” Jotal asked, turning for the door.
“Where are you going? Commander Deski will want your report when he gets back. Detaining a code forty-five is pushing things,” Rasha said.
“Maybe when Stoneville isn’t under attack I’ll worry about making a report,” Jotal scoffed and stalked out.
Rasha sighed and looked back at the screen in front of her. “We’re not usually this uptight,” she said. “These attacks have everyone on edge.”
It was about as close to an apology as she could get. “I don’t suppose you could tell me what those things are.”
“Did you see it?” she asked, looking up from the screen.
“No,” I said. “I heard them, though.”
“There was only one,” she said. “And I’m not supposed to be talking to you about it. If you’ll behave, I’ll take your cuffs off once you’re in the cell.”
“Any chance I’m getting my blaster back? I didn’t see Sergeant Jotal give it to you.”
“You surrendered a weapon to him?” she asked, leading me back to a small group of cells in a separate room.
“I have video if you need to see it.”
“I’ll make sure you get it back.”
“How much trouble am I in? I was only trying to help that woman,” I said.
Rasha’s face was pinched with conflicting emotions. “Jotal is holding you on a violation of the security act. The Stoneville Police have expanded powers due to these … well, you saw firsthand what we’re up against.”
“Do I need legal help?”
“I can’t give advice on that,” she said. “You might wait to see how Commander Deski decides to deal with it. Are you hungry? I was just about to get lunch before the attack happened.”
“I could eat.”
It was my first brush with the law, and I found that sitting in a jail cell wasn’t all that exciting. I fidgeted and then decided my time would be better spent searching for answers about what had happened. That turned out to be a big nothing burger. As far as I could find, there were no public records about attacks in Stoneville. Nor was there any reference to code forty-five or even the granting of special powers to the police force.
Minutes turned into hours and at some point, I heard a voice through the doorway that I recognized. Not someone I knew well, just the man, Tsaki, who’d caused us trouble when we unloaded crates earlier.
“You locked him up?” Tsaki asked, laughing, his voice loud enough to carry through the station. I’d heard Rasha leave about an hour before and suspected I was in for the night.
“Don’t go back there.”
“Who’s gonna know?” The door swung open, and Tsaki leered at me. “I knew you was trouble, off-worlder. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll crawl back home.”
I didn’t bother to open my eyes and pretended to sleep with my head resting against the wall. I felt a twinge of ill-intent from the man and opened my eyes just in time to see him throw something at me through the bars. I caught a stone, the size of a child’s fist just before it hit me.
“Damn it, Tsaki, you can’t do that!”
I set the stone on the bench next to me and closed my eyes again.
“What, you got nothin’ to say?” Tsaki asked and when I didn’t answer, he laughed again. “He’s got nothin’ to say.” His laugh followed him from the room.
The cell was shielded in such a way that I was unable to make contact with my sister and friends. Access to municipal data was allowed and if I tried, I could figure out how to get around the block. Olivia had queried me a couple of times, checking on my attitude. I’d been careful to answer with a simple – bored. I didn’t need them making trouble.
The Tipperary star, also called the sun on Curie, had been down for an hour when I heard someone new enter the station. I wondered if Jotal was back to torment me some more, but it wasn’t difficult to hear the difference in how the person moved through the building. This time, when the door opened, I watched with interest.
“Ready to get out of here?” The man was older and carried himself with a no-nonsense, tired look.
I nodded. My nonverbal response irked him slightly, but he pushed that away.
“I’ve reviewed Jotal’s report and spoke with shopkeeper Neari. I appreciate your instinct, son, I do. Your actions, however, endangered every person in that shop. If that thing decided to follow its prey inside, you’d all be dead. Not a thing you and your blaster could have said about it. I need your word that you won’t endanger my citizens like that again,” he said.
“And you’ll let this all go?” I asked.
“I have wide-ranging power due to the current threat,” he said. “I don’t see how keeping you in a cell, which is well within that power, helps anyone. As long as the two of us understand that you made a mistake today.”
“She was right there,” I said in a whisper, rubbing my wrist where I still had claw marks from her fingernails pulling back my vac suit. “I almost had her.”
Commander Deski’s face softened. “You couldn’t have helped her. She was already gone.”
“Can’t you at least tell me what it was?”
“We call it Noctisid,” he said. “It’s a Nodari word meaning Sand Ghost. I assure you, though, it’s not a ghost.”
“All that automatic gunfire and nobody got a hit?” I said.
“It’s fast, son,” he said, unlocking the door. “Impossibly fast. It seems to sense where it’ll meet danger and is able to dodge out of the way of bullets.”
“I don’t know what code forty-five is,” I said. “How can I agree to not do something if I don’t know what that is?”
“It’s not that hard,” he said. “If you hear those sirens, take cover and pray that thing isn’t after you or yours. Don’t come out until you hear the all-clear. As far as I’m concerned, you and me, we’re settled.”
“Do I get my pistol back?”
“Got some brass to you, stepping out with that little shooter against a Noctisid,” he said, unlocking a drawer beneath the counter.
“Where does it come from, this Noctisid?”
“Canyons north of here,” he said. “Up in Nodari territory. We’re not exactly on the best of terms with the tribe but we do some trading.”
“Isn’t that where the races go through?” I asked. “Is that smart?”
“We’ve been racing in the canyons there since well before the Kroerak War. Never had a problem,” he said. His delivery lacked conviction and what I was pretty sure I heard, was that it was a money maker, and above his pay grade to make any changes.
“No more opening public doors while we’re under lockdown,” I said.
“And you’ll take cover.”
“Is that a requirement for my release?”
“No,” he sighed. “If you want to get yourself killed, that’s your prerogative.”
I pushed the small blaster into the holster and slipped on the ring which powered my tiny fist-sized shield. I was fortunate that the ring looked like an inexpensive piece of jewelry. Otherwise, the likelihood of losing it to the ill-tempered Jotal would have been higher.
I nodded. I’d like to have complained about Jotal’s treatment and even more to point out the open hostility of his friend Tsaki while I was in custody. The only reason I didn’t was because of the often-learned lesson that no one likes a tattletale, especially a privileged one.
“That wouldn’t be my first choice,” I said.
“I understand,” he said with a more conciliatory attitude. “What you saw today was horrific. It’s been almost a year since a Noctisid made it all the way into Stoneville.”
“Those men with the long rifles,” I said. “They weren’t your men, were they?”
“Nodari,” he said. “They’d been chasing the Noctisid. Be careful around them. There is distrust between Stoneville residents and Nodari. Today won’t make that better. Many people believe they brought the Noctisid to Stoneville.”
“Is that what you think?” I asked.
“I’ve seen no direct evidence. The Nodari are a rugged people and do not easily get along with townspeople. We’ve had flare-ups between Stoneville residents and Nodari. It’s one of the reasons the races are so important. It provides an outlet.”
“Thank you for sharing that, Commander,” I said.
“Look, as much as you nearly killed yourself today, I respect your instincts to help Jeanest. She was a good woman and leaves a family behind,” he said.
Deski’s face was filled with weariness. I had the sense that he was fighting to keep his small town from falling apart.
Without further conversation, I walked from the police station. The Mercantile was nearly deserted with only a few vendors moving about in their open-air shops. I suspected trading had ended early in wake of the attack and wondered how the next day would be.
Coming. Olivia didn’t answer my push as much as I felt her happiness at my release.
I ended up passing a food cart, where a thin man was turning over a spicy smelling but unrecognizable griddle full of meat. I hadn’t eaten much, and on a whim, I bartered with him for a bag full.
I’ll admit to feeling a little homesick when I caught sight of the lights of the shipyard and Bandit came into view. At the gate stood a sole figure, a figure I would recognize anywhere and had dreamed about since I’d … yeah, you’ve heard already, I get it.
