Blood Siren Read online

  “I am insistent,” he said, knowing that Mamiya was right and that he was wrong. To his shame, he simply did not want to give up on the idea of going out there. What kind of leader will I be if I give into personal feelings like this? Is it just this once? he wondered.

  “I am not trying to deny you what you want. That is not my place, but everyone expects you to do this. It is your primary obligation until your father’s funeral is complete. You must go home.”

  The spark of an idea formed in his head. “Everyone expects me, I know that—” the idea blossomed; a way to her without shaming himself! “—including Zalor Revenant. We still don’t know how he got the compound into my father. What if he is anticipating my return to Taiumikai? What if there is a surprise awaiting us? Perhaps we never make it there?”

  For a moment, barely half a second, Mamiya looked stunned. Then the expression was gone. “If there was a legitimate security concern, your aunt would have no cause for complaint if we were to arrive late. Coupled with your earlier reasoning it is a powerful argument, however, we cannot chance your father’s body where you propose to take us.”

  Ichiro opened his mouth, taken aback by Mamiya’s sudden cooperation. He hadn’t expected to win this quickly.

  “Could we send the Musashi home with it? Is there another FTL vessel heading out to where we need to go?”

  Mamiya’s eyes twitched. “No. No vessels in the system are scheduled to head to Elmorus or anywhere near the war region in our timeframe.”

  Ichiro ground his teeth. “What if we took the journey on the Musashi? How much of a delay would that cause in getting my father’s body home.”

  “Time spent ground-side excluded?”

  He nodded.

  “Twenty-nine days to the exit zone, twenty-eight days to cover the 460 light years to Elmorus and ten days from Elmorus’ exit zone to the ground would get us there in sixty-seven days. The journey from Elmorus crosses 1,262.5 light years. Ten days back up to Elmorus’ exit zone, plus seventy-six days of travel time, plus thirty days to the ground in the Taiumikai system would total 116 days, rendering a total travel time—less time on the ground—of 183 days. Comparing that figure to the total travel time directly to Taiumikai, 125 days, yields a delay of fifty-eight days of galactic time.”

  The ship time would be less due to dilation effects while traveling through the Einstein-Rosen bridge, but it was the galactic time that mattered to his aunt. “What if the Musashi merely drops us off in the Elmorus system and continues on immediately to Taiumikai?’

  “How would we leave the system after the drop?” Mamiya asked.

  “Answer me first.”

  He inclined his head. “Based on my calculations that would save only the time spent traveling up and down Elmorus’ exit zone, or twenty-days.”

  “Making the total delay 38 days. That isn’t as bad.”

  “What about leaving Elmorus?”

  “We could wait for the Musashi to come back for us, I suppose.”

  “My lord, the planet is in the war zone.”

  He took a deep breath. “I know that.”

  “I cannot risk you there for long. You know we should not be contemplating going in the first place, but—”

  Ichiro held up his hand. “I know, Mamiya-san, but we are. You’re smarter than myself, yes?”

  “I would never say that, Mitsugawa-uesama.”

  “But it’s true. CELs are supposed to be the equivalent of a walking, cybernetic computer, aren’t they?”

  Mamiya-san nodded. “I do have a greater multitasking capability as I can assign multiple tasks across my cyberganglia, however, processing speed and tasking does not necessarily equal increased intelligence.”

  Ichiro chuckled, genuinely surprised at how much his new retainer’s speech tickled him. “Okay, let’s skip the question. Find me a way back home after we arrive at Elmorus.”

  “I will.” He bowed.

  “Mamiya-san, thank you.” Ichiro nodded once, then relaxed back into his chair. He let the feeling of gratitude and his surprise at Mamiya’s sudden support for his plan wash about his chest for a time, then decided that he would be waiting for her for once. There was nothing to do in the shuttle but wait to reach the Musashi, and so he as might as well spend the time in the ship’s node with his perceptions accelerated.

  He signaled the computer to put him into hibernation and felt the micro-needles in the restraints across his chest bite into his skin. The sharpness of the needles faded into a cool sensation crawling across his chest.

  “I will have a solution for you by the time we reach the Musashi,” Mamiya said.

  “I know you will.” His eyelids unfurled, and he felt his body grow heavy moments before unconsciousness came.

  Chapter Ten

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  41:1:0 CST (J2400:3059)

  The Confederate Space Authority headquarters sat on the western side of the government district. It engulfed the entirety of the hexagonal block. Five-hundred meters on each side and seven-hundred tall, it looked like the head of a giant, dark bolt driven into the ground among the kilometers-tall office towers around it. Within its black-granite edifice labored the peacekeepers of the Confederation and the bureaucrats who managed them.

  Throngs of agents and office workers of many species were buzzing about the room when Nero entered. Laid out before him, the rows of black, rectangular desks gave him the impression that he was looking out at a field of black coffins stretching out to the far wall. The image sent a chill through him, and was hardly an appropriate one for beings that worked to preserve justice in the Confederation. He blinked, forcing the idea from his mind before seeking out the reason he came here. Agent Sorina Khepria’s desk was deep within the cybercrimes and security section far from the nearest of the large windows looking out at the shade-shrouded office towers that surrounded the building.

  She sat at her desk clad in her formal, stiff-shouldered uniform. Her red hair, styled so that the twin strips were braided together, now covered most of the top of her scalp and flowed backward into a single braid that she had placed over one shoulder. She looked up at him with her large amber eyes and her long ears twitched three times in rapid succession, and smiled when he arrived at her desk.

  “Praetor Graves,” she said.

  “Agent Khepria. You’ve been practicing.” He glanced around, noting that several beings were trying hard not to be noticed as they watched him. A Cleebian was bold enough to stare with one of his lateral eyes until Nero’s glare made him rotate it away.

  “Practicing? Oh, the human smile. Yes, I have. Does it show?” Her ears vibrated.

  “You’re getting good at it,” he nodded.

  “Thank you.” She smiled again. “Dropping by for lunch?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got an appointment over at the VoQuana embassy. I’m curious if you’re interested in joining me.”

  Her ears dipped to opposite sides. “The VoQuana? Wow. What do you want me to do? Hacking them is going to be rough—”

  “Nothing like that. It’s part of the Mitsugawa case. I figured you’d want to be involved.”

  Her ears rippled. “Speaking of which, I had another look at that message I intercepted on Earth.”

  The one sent from the Gaian Biodome to the Mitsugawa arcology, Prospero reminded him.

  “And?” he asked.

  “And I decrypted it. I know you said to disregard it, but I couldn’t help myself. I’m—how do the Solans say it? I’m all nose?”

  “You’re nosy,” he corrected.

  “Yes, that’s it. The message said—well, have a look.” She sent the file to Prospero, who displayed it in his vision.

  ‘Fears of Siren confirmed.’

  Nero’s lips pressed together. “What’s Siren?”

  Her ears fluttered.

  I may have a reference for you. The Cronus family is typical among Barony houses in that they have recording sensors everywhere in their towers. I’ve been us
ing my background processing to review the records for the last two weeks leading up to the incident. I found something.

  “Share it with Agent Khepria,” he said.

  Linking.

  A window appeared in Nero’s vision showing a video feed from one of the security scanners in the Cronus pod obtained with his Abyssian authorization. He and Khepria watched as the baroness and her guests dined at an ornate table packed with platters of elaborately prepared food. Prospero fast-forwarded the feed to a specific point.

  Baron Mitsugawa Yoji was speaking. “There was one thing, though, mention of some cargo being shipped into Broghite space. The dates of the shipment would’ve gotten it there about fourteen days before your family was killed.”

  Baron Keltan leaned forward over his plate. “What was it?”

  “It didn’t say, just a codename,” Aurora said.

  “It’s nothing to go on, Cylus. We haven’t been able to learn anything more about the name or what the ship—”

  Baron Keltan interrupted Baroness Cronus. “What was it?”

  Baron Mitsugawa Yoji answered. “The codename was Siren.”

  Prospero ended the feed.

  Nero met Khepria’s eyes. “Am I hearing this right? The recording implies that Baron Mitsugawa knew who murdered the Keltan family?”

  “Maybe not. It sounds circumstantial to me,” Khepria said.

  Agreed, there is nothing in the recordings that indicts any person or organization in the Keltan murders. However, this particular recording has portions that imply Baron Revenant may be involved in whatever Siren is.

  “It is unlikely that we’ll find anything connecting him directly. I will do a search for records of shipments to Brogh Prime in the months leading up to the war. It will take a while, though. I am sure there’s a lot of data to go through. Commerce with the Commonwealth was increasing at the time,” she said.

  “I guess that gets you out of coming with me to the embassy.”

  She cocked an ear to the side. “Sorry, Praetor Graves.”

  “That’s alright. A VoQuana stronghold is no place for a lady anyway.”

  Her ears drooped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Er, what?” he asked.

  She’s implying that you just insinuated that she is too weak to join you on account of her gender.

  “Oh, wait, no I didn’t mean that. Um, I only meant—” he stammered.

  Apologize, trust me.

  Nero hesitated, uncertain of what he was apologizing for. Khepria’s ears were quivering and her eyes were expectant.

  Trust me.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. “Alright. Um.” He looked over her desk.

  It was a standard model designed to hold a personal computer server for the assigned agent within its murky surface. The only thing adorning it was a fist-sized pewter polyhedron—a model of a Relaen World Ship. The habitat spheres had miniature pulsing lights to represent windows, and the hexagonal lattice structure connecting them had tiny cables and pipes arranged in a perfect simulation of the real thing. At the model’s center was a holographic representation of the ship’s neutronium reactor.

  “It’s a model of my home ship, the D’Alassyrn,” she said.

  “It’s, ah, very nice.” He felt his cheeks flush.

  “Thank you,” she responded. She held his gaze patiently. “I’ll let you know when I have something more about Siren.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She saluted and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes drifted shut as her mind dove into the Cyberweb.

  He watched her breathe for a moment, then headed for the door.

  Nero banked the air-car to the right, dropping it out of the lower cloud layer and bringing Ikuzlu’s Embassy District into view. Nestled between the residential towers and the government buildings on a narrow strip of the atoll, the structures and walkways of the district lit up like a web glittering with dew. It was early evening and there was still just barely enough light to see by without having to engage the vehicle’s night-vision sensors. The sky was ablaze in the east, orange and red with a hint of green.

  The air-car slid like a black knife between the tall, cylindrical residence buildings under Nero’s expert handling. He swung around one and lined himself up with the rows of inhuman architecture and gunned the engine. The thrusters whined and inertia shoved him into his seat. The repeating towers gave way to a street lined with alien flora as unique as the buildings around it.

  The smooth membrane-like domes of the Galaenean Unity sat across from the jagged crystal towers of the Achinoi Nation at the mouth of the district. Beside them the colorful cone structures of the Relaen Regency shared the street with the gilded lattices of Cleebian construction. The Savorchans, although now a part of the Confederation, had no official representation in the Sovereign Council, and so lacked an embassy compound as of yet. He wondered how long it would be before they did.

  Beyond those buildings was the security checkpoint that separated the Confederation member structures from the embassies of the other powers. Nero passed over it without challenge. His craft’s transponder automatically let those on the ground know his authorization to enter the restricted diplomatic zone.

  The conical buildings of the non-aligned Relaen were identical to those of the allied, and framed the entrance to the district. Not all members of the Regency, a decentralized sovereignty, were part of the Confederation. They were a nomadic people, having lived among the stars in their world-ships for so long it was said they had forgotten terrestrial life, though Nero knew this was untrue thanks to his association with Agent Khepria. They were known in all the corners of explored space and perhaps beyond.

  The next group of structures were harder to look at—for him, they were reminders of war and pain.

  The Broghite embassy, abandoned since the war started, was already in a state of disrepair. Its single sloped tower rose like a dark obelisk over swampy fountains and weedy paths. On the same declining estate were the embassies of their allies. The Greeban compound, an abandoned forest of diamond shaped tubes studded with opaque bubbles that looked like pearls trapped in moss-covered stone, and the Jaoczar building, a thick column-like structure buttressed with multiple arches around its base contrasted sharply with apical lace-like structures. They seemed to serve no purpose other than to make the whole thing look like some kind of massive, ridiculous tree. Nero wondered if the Broghite Commonwealth was as extraneous in war as it was in architecture. If it was the case that they were, it was hard to believe the war was dragging out for so long.

  I agree with you for once. Any species, or set of species, that conducts itself in such an inefficient manner is more likely to lose a war against a more efficient one, Prospero said.

  Nero hoped he would never have to find out firsthand about the Broghite’s battlefield efficiency. Savorcha had given him his fill of war.

  He slowed as he approached the end of the street. On one side rose the black monolithic building of the Orgnan Empire. The jagged, red “Y”-like symbol of their empire glowed like hot iron on the building’s eyeless face. Nero felt something hot stir in his gut, tying it into knots at the sight of the imperial seal. The last time he had seen that symbol displayed confederate troops were dying before it.

  The space around the building was as barren as a volcanic plane. He knew from the Savorchan Conflict that the Orgnan were a brutal species who favored barren landscapes that Solans normally shunned. They liked to build their architecture, and even their ships, to be as imposing and intimidating as possible to other species. There were two other sentient races known to be a part of the Empire, but they had no architectural representation here. The Orgnan did not allow their slave races to have any official presence in the galactic community.

  The last construct rose high above the street, like two massive, inclined boxes stacked one on top of another and connecte
d by a long staircase wrapping around them from the base to a flat roof. Several small buildings, antenna, dishes, and mysterious tubes with glowing lights on their ends populated the surface of the structure and made landing on it impossible.

  “Strange looking building,” Nero said. He knew VoQuana government buildings by description, but this was the first he’d seen in person. Although he served in the VoQuana War, he’d never been near one.

  It’s a ziggurat.

  “A what?”

  An ancient place of worship built by the Solan tribes of the Babylonians, Sumerians, and Assyrians; not that you’d know who they were.

  “What the hell are the VoQuanas doing with it?”

  VoQuana, it’s both singular and plural, Nero. Not much is known about the VoQuana, however, they do claim to be the half-Solan hybrid descendants of alien visitors to Earth.

  “What?”

  I have no data on how they did it, but VoQuana claim to have hybrid DNA from both the alien race that preceded them, the Qua, and Solans. Oh, and Nero, they consider it taboo to say the name of their Qua predecessors aloud, so please don’t while we’re in the Embassy.

  “Right.” Many cultural taboos seemed silly to him, but he supposed there was no point in being purposefully antagonistic.

  He put the car into a climb and brought it over the ziggurat, then tilted the vehicle into a bank and searched for a landing pad. Finding none, he grunted and landed the craft on the street. Several VoQuana moving about the structure took note when the car’s landing gear touched down.

  VoQuana were a rare sight in the Confederation, and it had been decades since he saw one in person. All of them had the same light-gray skin. They could almost pass for human from a distance, but they were slender to the point of looking emaciated. Their heads appeared enlarged and looked like upside down teardrops. They had small noses and two huge glassy black eyes whose irises looked like rings of colored sparks floating in a sea of darkness. Although most had hair on their scalps, none had any eyebrows, facial, or body hair of any kind. Their fingers had fleshy tapered ends instead of nails. On average they matched Solans in height, but the oddness of their shapes gave them something of a monstrous appearance to his eyes.