Endurance: The Complete Series Page 30

  Areva’s eyes shimmered ever so slightly before she blinked them dry. “I think those are the most words you’ve spoken in a row since I’ve known you.”

  “This is the proper moment for them.”

  “If … if hypothetically, I felt the same way about you …”

  “I would be a happy man.”

  “You’re a stoic man.”

  “I would be stoically happy.”

  The corners of her mouth curved upward. “I think I would be stoically happy, too.”

  Viktor’s heart pounded like it had never pounded before. He took her hands in his own. “Areva, please stay.”

  She inhaled, exhaled slowly. “If … if the ship does get reassigned to Neptune …”

  “It will.” Now Viktor hoped for the boring patrol.

  “If it does … I’ll stay.” Her smile finally reached her eyes. “And if it doesn’t … I’m sure we can work something out.”

  Viktor’s own smile grew and he seized the moment. He leaned down and pressed his lips gently against Areva’s. It was a chaste kiss, quiet, but the heat thrumming beneath the light touch zinged through his entire body.

  They didn’t need outrageous displays of passion to communicate through that moment; this was who they were.

  When they separated, Areva’s smile remained. “Are we still going out for shooting and dinner?”

  “Yes,” said Viktor. “But now it is not just dinner. Now it is just a date.”

  “That sounds just right.”

  He turned to head through the hatch, but her voice stopped him. “I guess this explains why I came through the fighting without injury.”

  Viktor frowned. “What?”

  She slipped her hand into his and squeezed. “I wasn’t two days from retirement after all.”

  They returned to the bridge separately. No one commented on Areva’s surprise appearance from the captain’s office. Viktor wondered if they knew what had just happened. Then he decided they could mind their own business. This was one of the happiest moments of his life, and he would enjoy it.

  Though the decaying city loomed on every side, the park over which the Endurance made its ascent was still moderately pretty. Overgrown grass and weeds choked it, but the greenery remained. Even the Haxozin couldn’t kill everything.

  One of the external camera views on the bridge screens caught Viktor’s attention. “Zoom there,” he said to the scanners operator.

  Amidst the wilting flowers and misshapen shrubs, a pair of zombies shambled.

  They were holding hands.

  Viktor smiled inwardly. Mistakes may have been made, both today and in the past, but at least everything was now as it should be.

  * * *

  Systems away, a five-pointed star ship hung in orbit over a lifeless planet. A burst of light erupted nearby, and a second, smaller star emerged into regular space, braking thrusters firing all across the front of the vessel. It assumed a synchronous orbit alongside its sister.

  A small craft slipped from a docking bay on the newcomer and darted across space to the larger ship. Its occupants, a pair of red-suited and helmeted soldiers, sat at the controls as if perfectly at ease, but small twitches in their movements belied the veneer of calm.

  They landed in the star ship’s bay and hurried from their shuttle through the winding corridors to the bridge.

  The star ship’s control room sat in the very center of the five prongs, protected by multiple layers of bulkheads and shielding. It had no windows, but the display screens on all four walls and the ceiling showed exterior views of the surrounding space. One screen held a visual of the sister star ship. Another focused on the dead planet. The others shifted between scanner telemetry of their current system and diagrams of other solar systems throughout the galaxy.

  The control stations along the walls were unmanned, but on a short dais in the center of the room sat a single chair, turned away. The back of a red helmet could be seen over the seat, and red armored hands lay on the armrests.

  The two soldiers halted at the door.

  “Displays to default,” said the man in the chair. His voice was monotonous, cold, dispassionate. Deadly.

  All screens reverted to a three-hundred-sixty degree view of the space outside the star ship. The planet and sister ship remained, and in the distance one of the screens revealed the ball of light that was the system’s star.

  The chair swiveled to face the door. The seated man wore the same blood-red armor as the two soldiers, but where one of theirs had a silver patch running diagonally across its chest and the other bore no markings at all, the man in the chair wore a thick silver line trimmed with two stripes of gold. The same markings ran along the sides of his helmet.

  Both soldiers spread their open hands and bowed. “Sovereign,” said the one with the silver stripe, “one of our outlying scouts received a broadcast message from a system in one of the galactic tendrils. They relayed it to us, and we have come here as quickly as possible.” The sound of his breath resonated out of his helmet. “We found the enemy’s home world.”

  The chair swiveled silently as the sovereign turned to study the display screen showing the ruined planet below. “Recall the fleet,” he ordered in the same dispassionate tone. “Tell the rest of our brethren to prepare for war.”

  * * *

  Just Desserts

  A Short Story

  In retrospect, it seemed only natural that their first date would include a gunfight.

  Even seated, Viktor Ivanokoff towered over the back of the restaurant booth, making Areva Praphasat look smaller by comparison. It didn’t help that she shrank into the far corner of her seat and slouched so low that half her torso disappeared beneath the table.

  “I am sorry,” Viktor said, watching her slide down another centimeter. “I thought this establishment was dark enough.”

  “It’s okay.” Areva tossed her head so that her short, black hair covered the restaurant-exposed side of her face. “Nobody’s looking.”

  Someone at a table across the tiled floor suddenly glanced at them, and Areva disappeared the rest of the way. The white tablecloth rippled to show her point of exit.

  Viktor grimaced and lifted his own side of the cloth to peer beneath. “You can sit between me and the wall. Then nobody will see you.”

  Her face brightened. “Thanks.”

  Half a second later, she’d slipped into the booth next to him, protected by his colossus of muscles, able to observe the environment without risking it observing her back. Too many years in interplanetary undercover work had a way of making one jumpy.

  “Guy in the white shirt,” she whispered.

  Viktor glanced across the room. A man in a suit that cost three months of Viktor’s United Earth Law Enforcement salary sat in his shirtsleeves at a central table, boasting loudly to a slightly-less-well-dressed man about his purchase of some real estate. “An entire sub-island!” he said. “Just two kilometers off Median’s coast. Great Mediterranean weather, close to the capital city. Luxury condos there are gonna be a hit. Building starts next week.”

  “I see him,” Viktor said to Areva.

  “He’s lying. He’s broke.”

  “How do you know?”

  “His pinkies twitch every time he talks about the construction.”

  Viktor paid closer attention, and sure enough, the next comment about “superlative contractors and materials” came with a nervous jitter through the man’s hands.

  “Also I’ve seen that island, and there was a big sinkhole in the middle of it. Whoever built it did a lousy job. He’d have to have spent a fortune filling it in, or the first storm is going to flood the place.”

  Viktor smiled and found Areva’s hand to clasp in his. “At least we need not worry about such things. There are no oceans in space.”

  Areva laughed. “I’m curious, what are you planning to do once we head out? Returning to the routine Neptune patrol is going to feel uneventful.”

  “I bought some
new books.”

  “Long ones?”

  “Da.”

  “What are you going to do in the second week?”

  “Defeat you at marksmanship again.”

  She swatted him. “What do you mean? I scored more points tonight.”

  “We can compare targets.”

  “I don’t think the restaurant would appreciate us whipping out bullet-shredded papers. This is a fancy place.” She leaned forward incrementally to take another look around. “In fact, it’s the fanciest restaurant I’ve ever seen.”

  “Including ones you visited in special ops?”

  She made a face. “I did more lowbrow infiltration. The fancy stuff went to people with seniority. Seriously, Viktor, how are you affording this?”

  A commotion at Fancy Suit’s table stole Viktor’s attention. The real estate tycoon had stood up, teetering with a hand on the back of his chair. His face was flushed, his breathing erratic. “Dizzy … room’s spinning,” he mumbled.

  Viktor’s hand automatically checked to make sure the projectile gun tucked in his concealed holster was still there. It was. His senses leapt to alert as he watched Fancy Suit stagger against the chair. There was no way he’d gone from lucid to this drunk in such a short amount of time.

  With a shudder, he collapsed.

  Viktor was halfway to the man’s table before he hit the ground. He pulled his pocket computer from his slacks and flicked his UELE badge onto the screen, flashing it at the startled man still at the table. “Police. What happened?”

  He knelt to check Fancy Suit’s pulse as the other man sputtered. “I don’t know! One second we’re talking, and the next he starts sweating and his eyes go blank, and he says he doesn’t feel well …” The man cast a suspicious look at his meal and dropped his fork.

  Areva appeared beside Viktor. He didn’t flinch; he was used to her stealthy arrivals. She’d worn slacks and a nice blouse rather than an evening dress, giving her free range of movement. She held her pocket comp in her hand, the screen set to a fingerprint identifier, and pressed the fallen man’s thumb to it. Data crawled across the screen. She read it in a low tone. “Jarry Rin. Forty-two, no criminal record, no prior health problems.”

  Jarry Rin moaned and clenched his hands into fists. “Stable pulse,” Viktor told Areva, “but unstable breathing. Keep him still and call the hospital.” He stood to inspect the table as she began calling in the emergency on her comp.

  A steak the size of a lunar dome sat untouched on Rin’s plate next to equally unsampled greens that looked like lettuce but probably had a nicer name. The silverware hadn’t even been unwrapped. The only object at Rin’s setting that showed any sign of interaction was the bottle of Château de Montes 2118 with a rather overstated image of its originating vineyard on Venus, and Rin’s glass of the purple liquid. Spun strands of edible gold decorated the plates, and little flecks of it floated in both glasses.

  Viktor leaned over the bottle, careful not to touch anything, and sniffed.

  It smelled like wine.

  Then he did the same to Rin’s glass.

  A faint odor of garlic surged into his sinuses. He exhaled sharply by instinct and crouched back beside Areva.

  “Poison,” he whispered, “or a drug.”

  “Medhovers are on their way,” she replied. She’d mostly obscured herself beneath Rin’s table. “I called for backup. UELE officers are two minutes out. They’ll close off the building and question witnesses.”

  “Rin?”

  “He’s not getting worse, but he’s delirious.”

  Rin groaned and clutched his stomach.

  Again Viktor stood and faced Rin’s tablemate. He flipped his pocket comp to its fingerprint scanner and held it out to the man. “Your thumb.”

  The man blinked confusedly before comprehension dawned and he pressed his digit against the screen.

  Two beeps, and the scanner displayed the man’s identification.

  “Ed Alvarez,” Viktor said. “Tell me everything that happened since you arrived at the restaurant.”

  Alvarez shuddered. “We’ve been in business talks for about a month now. I’m a senior vice-president at a lunar mining company, and we were thinking about investing in his project. I knew something was going to happen; property values around Median are just too high for his island to get built with no trouble.”

  “Stop,” said Viktor. “What do you mean, you knew something would happen? Did you suspect danger?”

  “I thought Jarry was being paranoid. He kept saying there were competitors who wanted to halt his construction, that they would stop at nothing to ruin his project. He even bought this device for testing his food before consuming it, some attachment for his pocket comp.”

  “Did he use this device tonight?”

  “I think ... yes. Yes, he tested a drop of wine, but not the food. He hadn’t had a chance.”

  “Just the wine. You are sure?”

  “Yes. He said it was clean, but when he tried it he said the texture was wrong. I thought he was just showing off, flaunting his expensive tastes.”

  Viktor frowned and turned to search Rin. Apparently Areva had been listening. Though she’d by now obscured herself entirely beneath the white tablecloth, her hand appeared from beneath it, holding aloft Rin’s pocket comp.

  Viktor switched the device on and located the food analysis program—software for evaluating nutritional content, operated by depositing a miniscule sample in an attachable mini mass spectrometer, which would evaluate the chemicals present. Apparently Rin had co-opted the device as a poison tester.

  A chemical breakdown was present for a sample of wine. Tartaric acid. Fructose. Multiple words Viktor couldn’t define but recognized from other food labels as normal, non-harmful consumables.

  Not a hint of any kind of poison.

  “You are sure Rin tested this wine?” he asked Alvarez, pointing to the glass.

  Alvarez nodded.

  “And no one touched it after he tested it?”

  “No. There was no time; he drank right afterward.”

  Viktor linked the nutrient analyzer to Rin’s pocket comp and dipped a corner of the silk napkin into the wine, shook off the edible gold that clung to the fabric, then placed a drop on the device’s clear screen and activated it. A metal cover slid over the screen, and a faint humming vibrated the table. A minute later, the comp began displaying graphs and lists breaking down the chemical contents of the wine.

  This time there was an added ingredient.

  Arsenic.

  That explained the garlic scent.

  It did not explain how the poison made it into a glass that, a few minutes earlier, had not contained a hint of lethality.

  Viktor inhaled, exhaled slowly. He had a mystery on his hands.

  And he’d left his Holmesian deerstalker cap in his berth on the ship.

  Pity.

  “Mr. Alvarez, tell me again what happened after you entered the restaurant, with every detail you can remember.”

  After Alvarez repeated his story twice more, neither time producing any more usable information, Viktor noticed Areva staring toward the entry hall. He held up his hand and knelt to speak with her. “What is it?”

  “Backup should be here by now. What’s taking them so long?”

  “I do not know.”

  From the entryway, a waiter in full dress attire strode into the main dining room. “Attention, please,” he said, and lifted the tails of his coat to produce an energy gun from the back of his cummerbund.

  The patrons, most of whom had been sitting and watching the situation unfold from their tables, screamed.

  Viktor’s hand was on his gun at once, but the waiter was too quick. “We don’t want to tangle with the police,” he said. “Place your weapon on the ground and kick it over here, please, Officer.”

  “Lieutenant, actually,” said Viktor.

  “My apologies, Lieutenant. No disrespect intended. But I do need your gun.”

  V
iktor slowly pulled his p-gun from its holster and laid it on the tile. “What do you want?”

  “Funding.”

  “Who are you with?”

  “Your weapon first, please.”

  With a gentle kick, Viktor’s service weapon skittered across the floor. The waiter stepped forward and picked it up.

  “Now then,” he said, scanning the room with a pleasant smile, “I’m afraid you’ll all have to stay here for a while. My colleagues and I represent the Uprising, and we have temporarily seized this building.”

  “Uprising!” wailed a woman wearing a national park’s worth of fur.

  “No need for alarm,” said the waiter. “We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Then let the paramedics in,” said Viktor, pointing to Rin. “This man is dying.”

  “Yes, he is. But once our demands are met, we’ll ensure his survival.”

  “What demands?”

  “Everyone knows the Uprising’s demands,” scoffed a man with an honest-to-god monocle hanging from his pocket. “If they think taking over one restaurant will lead to the breakup of planetary government and a return to nation-states, they’re out of their addled minds!”

  “Believe it or not, we do have other goals besides that one,” said the waiter. “Tonight, we need money. Most of you may not know this, but the man currently lying on the floor is Mr. Jarry Rin, owner of Arbor Landing, the artificial island just off our lovely artificial capital’s coast. He’s procured investments from several dozen sources, promising a ten to one return once he turns it into a luxury community. One such source was our organization.”

  Indignant murmuring came from the patrons.

  “We’ve recently discovered that Mr. Rin has been squandering his funding, and that his proposed project may never actually come to fruition. Naturally we want to discourage our other business partners from defaulting on their loans, so we’re here to collect what’s ours. We have sealed the entrances and one of our outside agents is currently speaking with Mr. Rin’s company. Once they have returned our funding, we’ll leave you all to enjoy your dinner and him to his hospital visit.” A smile turned up one corner of his mouth, though it didn’t meet his eyes. “And for those of you in this room who are currently using Uprising money among your various investments, take notes. We’d hate to spoil another of your evenings.”