by Jody Lynn Nye
(The Imperium consists of those thousands of systems in the Milky Way Galaxy to which human beings have spread over the last ten millennia. Over that time, its ruling nobility has become, apart from the Emperor or Empress and those working cabinet ministers and planetary governors, a trifle on the self-indulgent, useless side. Lord Thomas Innes Loche Kinago is one who occasionally applies his intelligence and many talents to be actually helpful, a fact that must be concealed at all costs from his relatives.)
“Yoicks, after him, cousins! Kinago!” I exhorted my companions through my helmet microphone, as I dived toward an imaginary quarry on my skycycle.
“Kinago!” they echoed.
I tightened my long legs about the bronze-enameled frame and wrapped my fingers around the control handles, even though I was safely secured onto my saddle by straps across my chest, hips and thighs.
“Forward, Tybalt! Take me to victory!”
My friends and relatives arrayed themselves in three flanks behind me, one each to right, left and above me. The twenty of us swooped straight down a hundred stories toward the busy cityscape of Nikplig. I narrowly missed colliding with a goods vehicle about to dock on a platform a kilometer or so above the ground. With the expert skill at piloting and hair-trigger reflexes that I am too modest to admit I possess, I pulled aside just in time. My younger and only sister, Lionelle, hurtled past me. Her peacock-blue cycle, Destrier, clipped the edge of the lorry. I burst out laughing. She glanced over her shoulder and made a horrible grimace at me through her transparent, full-face visor. I hauled back on the controls and soared toward the brilliant, clear blue sky. My friends and cousins veered off to follow me, with my sister far back in the van.
We were in between rounds of Foxhunt. The game was based upon what had begun upon humanity’s ancient home of Earth as pest control measures but expanded in the hands of the nobility to a pastime bearing little resemblance to its origins and hence had been alternately, sometimes simultaneously, outlawed, vilified and lauded as part of humankind’s inimitable history. The version which we enjoyed was an offshoot of ‘drag-hunting’ that had taken place in the absence of any actual foxes. The trouble with this method was that the dragger often had no style or skill, and lent less sport to the pursuers than the true animal. Our preferred substitute was no less nor more intelligent than we ourselves. In other words, it was one of us. In this immediate case, it had been me. I had led my pursuers on a ridiculously complicated chase, in and out of what attractions existed in this rather pedestrian town. Within mere seconds to go in the time-limit, my cousin Xanson had trapped me in between two power-radiating antennae four hundred meters above the street and tagged me out. As his reward, he took over my role as quarry.
Even now, Xan was somewhere in the city below, waiting until the signal was given for the start of Round Two. In the meanwhile, the rest of us took the opportunity for comfort breaks, to lay waste to the sumptuous buffet that had been laid out for us by LAI serverbots on the roof of the tallest building in Nikplig, the Imperium Entertainment Network Center, or to troubleshoot our skycycles to determine if they had sustained any damage during Round One. Since my capture, mine had been emitting an odd noise in its drives.
Echoes of our engines resounded off the local architecture, no doubt exciting commentary on the part of the denizens of the city of Nikplig, four time zones west of our home in the capital city of Taino. They had not known we were coming, and no doubt wished us home and out of their airspace and afternoon traffic patterns as soon as possible. We always tried to keep our arrival in a new city on the QT, owing to the overwhelming chances that we would be met upon our arrival by the local gendarmerie, who, notwithstanding the fact that every one of us was a scion of the Imperium house, would cheerfully impound our cycles, fine us, and send us home in a secure vehicle. They knew that we fully intended to disturb the peace for an hour or so, possibly all afternoon. Owing to our noble status, law enforcement always treated us with respect, but little love was lost between them and us. The trouble was, the technology required for Foxhunt demanded that we play in fresh pastures that we normally did not frequent, and our incursions were very noisy. Hence, our invasion of a new city, or rather, one whose door we had not darkened in some time.
I tested out my trusty flyer on a turn or so around the building, humming as close as I could to the sides of the edifice without tearing out any of its windows by the velocity of my passage. I tuned a fitting here and a restraint belt there, to reduce as much wind resistance as possible and track down the source of that buzz. On the third revolution, I discovered that one of the housings above Tybalt’s power plant was not damaged but had come loose. It was the work of a moment to snap it back where it belonged. Once all was in place, I turned to swoop upward five kilometers, before arching into a tight parabola to hurtle toward the rooftop. With a sigh of satisfaction, I pulled up my cycle’s nose and came in for a landing.
I hopped out of the saddle, and could not resist giving Tybalt a pat as though my skycycle were a living steed that could respond to my caress. I stripped off the bronze-colored flight suit and tossed it to a nearby valetbot for freshening. I straightened the thin long-sleeved green silk jersey shirt over the tight-fitting black knee-length athletic pants I wore underneath, and enjoyed the fresh, warm air that played about my limbs. In twos and threes, my cousins alit and dismounted, most of them making for the tables. Lionelle streaked in and screeched to a halt beside me. I cringed for the wellbeing of Destrier’s undercarriage. She swung a blue-clad leg over the framework and bore down on me like bad news, ripping off her helmet as she did.
“You could have gotten me killed down there!” she said, her flint-blue eyes sparking. She swung the sapphire-colored helmet and struck me in the arm.
“Ow!” I protested, clutching my abused biceps. “I wouldn’t do anything to endanger you.”
“You barely left me any room to maneuver when you pulled up!”
“You are as good a rider as I am, Nell,” I said. “I knew you would avoid the delivery van.” I spoke no more than truth. We were the most accurate pilots among our cousins. We owed our skill to the heritage bestowed upon us by our mother, Tariana Kinago Loche, First Space Lord of the Imperium. There was no vehicle that we could not fly, ride, steer, navigate or drive with ease upon the first try.
“Flattery won’t repair the housing on my cycle!” She pointed to the frame over the processing unit that controlled Destrier’s steering and acceleration.
“I speak no more than the truth,” I said. “Come on, then. I’ll fix it for you.”
She plunked herself onto the seat of my cycle while I looked out tools to bend the case back into shape.
An onlooker might not find much in the way of resemblance between us. I am of much greater than average height, and I share hues of hair and eyes with our mother, being sandy-haired and sea-blue-eyed, though my skin is tawny after the fashion of my Kinago ancestors. My sister, on the other hand, had our father’s dramatic coloring. Her crisp black hair was braided in a thick plait down her back, and her deep blue eyes were striking in a heart-shaped face of peach-skin complexion. Her petite, slender physiognomy was remarkably similar to Mother’s. And, completing the trifecta in the genetic sweepstakes, our elder brother was again nothing like the two of us. It was a shame that he could not have joined us, but he was off planet on a private holiday with his wife.
“I am so sorry that you must report to the naval academy so soon,” I said, replacing a clip that had been cracked by the impact.
“At least I have a week,” Nell said, kicking her legs back and forth. “It took the six of us much longer to jump back to Keinolt than we anticipated. I thought it would be a lark to travel home from Humbero Academy on a freighter, but we were wrong. It was loud, dull and slow.”
“Well, you could hardly complain of that at the moment,” I remarked. “Apart from the loudness, of course.”
Our cousin Erita bore down on us, a glass of lemonade in each hand. The present amusement had been her idea. It was her turn to choose. She had won the last contest, which had been Nell’s clever notion, and a hard-fought contest it had been, too.
My mother had managed to scoop up most of Lionelle’s time, but what remained she spent in the company of her brothers and cousins, wreaking havoc as we used to do in our childhood. Alas, but I can’t say I missed those days, as they had never really ended. Lionelle and a handful of our younger cousins were due to begin their two years’ obligatory service in the space navy, and were enjoying their last days of freedom. Nell’s challenge had been one of gourmet tastings, to identify the origins and ingredients in exotic dishes. I had enjoyed that mightily, but had been pipped to the post by one single point that Erita had gained by spotting the difference between green and black cardamom. I still stung at the error, something that Erita was not likely to make me, or Xan, who had placed third, forget any time soon.
But I digress.
“Are we all having fun?” Erita asked, offering the beverages to us. The exertion of the hunt had brought roses to her cheeks, freshening her beauty. Erita was not as petite in height as Nell, but just as slim, with a long, oval face and a long pointed nose. Her hair was genuinely pale blonde, a rarity in any era. If any of the normally exuberant Kinago family could ever approach moroseness, she did. I put it down to her father’s family, the Betains. A good line, and related to the third Imperium dynasty, full of brave soldiers and kind-hearted philanthropists, all a credit to humanity, but with an undeniable tendency toward gloom. Today, she was almost outrageously cheerful.
“How soon until we launch again?” I inquired. I took a grateful sip, surprised at how parched my throat had become.
Erita waved her free hand vaguely. “My valetbot, NCK-0722, is on a comlink with the police. They are threatening to close us down. I thought Nancy-Kaye would be more diplomatic than I could bother to be.”
“Quite right,” I said. “When she’s done, we can begin. I am sure that Xan is getting impatient.”
“It is too irritating. They cannot understand why we didn’t stay in Taino.”
“Well, everyone knows that!” I said.
It was not merely a matter of logistics. We needed to vary the location of our games of Foxhunt not only because of the annoyance of the locals had we remained in one place, but because of the Hounds which allowed us to pursue our prey, who made use of technology to conceal themselves from easy discovery.
Boland Vanishment Generators had been in use in the Imperium and elsewhere for centuries, if not millennia, but seldom as objects for amusement. They had begun as tools for military use, providing the means for close-in surveillance and covert espionage operations. If the user remained perfectly still, the occasional twinkle from the image-displaying fabric would never give away their presence. Thus were many coups and catastrophes avoided.
From there, Bolands were seconded to industry, adding a necessary and useful means to avoid the ever-present observation devices that had become prevalent across civilization. Then, to celebrity. What leading social light would not like to escape public scrutiny once in a while, perhaps while making an assignation with another leading light (or someone with whom being seen would destroy one’s reputation or give rise to scandal and gossip)? And, contrarywise, they would have fallen also into the hands of those whom the gossip outlets paid to bring evidence of those secret meetings to the eyes and ears of the gasping public. A Boland, part device, part garment, became part of every successful paparazzo’s bag of tricks. Lastly though not leastly, simplified Bolands began to appear on the shelves of very expensive toy stores and novelty arcades, which is where one of my several-times ancestors discovered them and decided they would make a fun addition to our everlasting games and contests.
Naturally, since one would have been rendered invisible, there arose the need to be able to track one, should it become necessary. Again, we had access to descendants of former military devices, the Poctil Hound Drones. Unlike their fleshly counterparts, Poctil Hounds were upright floating cylinders bristling with sensing gear. A dab of one’s aroma, a drop of blood, a skin cell or two placed in the sensing receptacle, and the Drones would sniff out the whereabouts of anyone who needed to be found, following one very literally to the ends of the Earth. If one secreted oneself in a locale one frequented, the Drones, capable of detecting DNA in parts per trillion, would become confused by the diffusion of old skin cells. In other words, the scent would be muddied, potentially leading the hunters off after red herrings and dead ends, possibly adding hours to a round. My cousins and I did not have the patience for a long hunt. Therefore, it behooved us to seek fresher fields, and allow the old sites to lie fallow for a season or two. In Nell’s honor, we decided to try a city upon which we had not yet bestowed the bounty of our presence.
Hence, somewhere below us in the maze of strange city streets, my cousin, Lord Xanson, also astride a skycycle, but rendered invisible by the Boland drape that until an hour ago I had been wearing, was spreading trails here, there and everywhere in order to throw off any chance we had of finding him. We had to wait until Erita’s signal to release the hounds and set out in search of him. Until then, we amused ourselves, quaffing a stirrup cup or so and exchanging jokes and lies. I had for the occasion furnished myself with a few stories gleaned during my military service that I had not yet shared with my cousins and sister.
To a rapt and appreciative audience, I outlined the first of these excellent jokes, laying the groundwork that I was certain would lead to an outstanding laugh at my punchline.
“…But you all know Lady Carmine, and that she would never think of going away without at least a dozen attendants,” I said, leaning in confidentially toward my cousin Jil. When she was not being deliberately obtuse, she was among the best listeners for whom I could hope. She nodded. The others around her, including a distant relative and recent friend, Banitra Savarola Wilcox, nodded, too. “But she can hardly resist a good tipple. In his youth, my father was rather skilled at brewing cider from the apples in the Imperium Compound’s north orchard….” I stressed the words that would later become part of my punchline.
“My lord? May I have a word?”
I glanced back, dismayed at the interruption.
During most times of my life, the sound of Commander Parsons’s silken baritone voice would have filled me with curiosity and enthusiasm. That dignified and worthy gentleman had shown enormous patience with the budding dragonet that was Lord Thomas Kinago, and had since put me in the way of having some very intriguing and useful adventures. However, since I was at the moment making my own fun, he was, to put it bluntly, one distraction too many. I attempted to complete my story.
“Then, Lady Carmine….” I realized I was speaking to empty air.
The moment had been broken. My audience, always on the lookout for the very next impetus to spur their easily bored psyches, drifted off in twos and threes to seek refreshment. I turned to behold that gentleman’s purposely blank and smooth countenance, contained between a smooth sweep of jet black hair and a black, unadorned uniform.
“Parsons!” Nell rushed to embrace him. With my sister in her colorful riding habit wrapped around his ribcage, he rather resembled a statue suddenly festooned with party streamers. One stiff hand rose to pat her avuncularly on the shoulder. “How lovely to see you!”
“Lady Lionelle, I am delighted to see that you have returned safely. How have you been?”
“Oh, wonderful!” Nell declared, releasing him. “I am enjoying not having any more finals to take. And this welcome-home party has been so much fun. Everyone has been marvelous.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Parsons said gravely.
“I didn’t expect to see you until dinner tonight at Mother’s. Is Thomas in trouble?”
“Not at this time, my lady.”
“Too bad,” Nell said, with a cheeky grin.
I made an ogre’s face and lunged at her with my arms over my head. Shrieking with laughter, she retreated toward the refreshment table. Once she was safely out of earshot, I turned to Parsons.
“And what brings you to this desolate outpost?”
“Your skills are required, my lord.”
I felt my eyebrows climb my brow, but my expression did not summon forth an answering one in Parsons’s dour mien. He might well have been a statue. I was forced to resort to words.
“Which ones?” I asked. “They are all at your disposal, though I would prefer not to disabuse my cousins that I am as dissolute a personality as they believe me to be. In the layman’s cant, I have a reputation to uphold.”
“I realize that, my lord. It would be of great assistance if you would assist me, in a casual way, of course. We are pursuing a miscreant in the proximate region. Your craft is faster and more nimble than most of those seconded to law enforcement, and there are few to rival your skill in the saddle. You could easily cover the airspace, using your cousins’ presence as cover, and relay information back to agents in the area. Mr. Frank would appreciate your assistance.”
He spoke of the mysterious master of Imperium covert operations who had ordered us into action on previous occasions. I had yet to meet the man, a matter that excited my deepest curiosity.
“Say no more,” I said, holding up a hand. “In all honor, I can’t leave my sister to the tender mercies of the rest of the clan. Her absence at school has left her softer than she thinks she is, and I do not want her to harm herself accidentally until she gets her sea legs back, so to speak. In an hour – say, three at the most – Nell will be on her way back home to Mother, and I will be at your service. Unfortunately, we are just about to enter stage two of a three-part contest. I am intrigued, tickled and flattered that you have come to me for aid, but the time is simply not a convenient one.”
Parsons was not to be deterred. “My lord, this is a most serious matter. This individual is very dangerous. Reports indicate he is carrying a device that will disrupt communications between the satellites system and Keinolt defense. It may be a feint to see if we are paying attention to such incursions, or the actual event that precedes an invasion of planetary airspace. Every moment’s delay in capturing him puts the Imperium at risk.”
“I am desolated, but I must refuse. I regret that I have no time to devote to the matter, Parsons, I said, and I truly did regret it. But my sister is only here for a short time, and her well-being is my primary concern. When the contest is over, providing I have not won,” I added, “since I would be choosing the next amusement for my cousins, I will join you wherever you may be.”
I was distracted at that moment by the sister in question. Nell had joined the others among the hovering pack of hound drones, choosing the ones that would fly with her during the next round. They were similar in construction, but their coloration and exterior sensor arrays varied greatly. She beckoned to a handful of them to cluster behind her. Among them her choices was a favorite of mine, which I called Melusine. I strode over and pulled my hound away. It hovered at my shoulder.
“Sorry, Nell, but this one is mine.”
“No, Thomas, you are wrong,” Nell said, with a severe look that could have been my mother to the life. “She was mine before I went away to school.”
“She belonged to me before you began to play at fox-and-hounds,” I said, with a casual shrug. “Childish games. I let you play with her. You couldn’t call that a transfer of ownership. How could I not be generous to my only sister?”
“Oh,” Nell said, with a look so sweet that honeybees ought to have been arrowing directly for her face to sip the nectar. “And you had been! I treasured Melusine. Just because I couldn’t take her with me didn’t change that gift. You are the best big brother.”
I was determined not to give ground, nor was she, but to raise our voices over such a trivial matter as a drone would render us ridiculous in the eyes of our cousins. We fought over it in a deliberately offhand manner which would lead an outsider to think that neither of us cared a subatomic particle for the object in question, when in truth each of us would die before yielding.
Parsons, never one to stand by while war was being waged, stepped in between us.
“Lady Lionelle, Lord Thomas will surely cede you most of these devices, but I believe that he has made considerable use of it during your absence. Even if you shared Melusine as children,” and here he emphasized that word in a way that shamed us both, “he has adapted its programming to his own preferences.”
“I want it.” Nell pouted. “I used it during our chase after him just a few hours ago! You didn’t say anything then.”
“But now that I am back among the hunters instead of the hunted,” I said, “I want to use it. Xan will be tricky prey.”
“It’s the best hound in the game!”
Parsons drew Melusine toward him. A dent of perhaps one millimeter dented his epicene brow, indicating the deepest of concentration.
“But you see, my lady?” Parsons asked, with that austere yet ingratiating manner that made him worth his weight in dilithium crystals, “it is sadly outdated.” He flipped open the compartment on the side and pointed to the polished circuitry around the sampling cloth that Xan had brushed over his forehead and wrists. “The DNA chamber does not have as many sensors as the newest model.” The cloth fell out onto the ground. I sprang to retrieve it. “Thank you, my lord.” He replaced it and closed the chamber. He turned to the next nearest drone, and opened its receptacle to display a galaxy of bright silver dots. “This one that you call Corsair has three times the sensor points. It also has a much faster response time and a more efficient drive. In other words, it will lead not only your pack, but everyone else’s. You would not wish,” he added, with a dismissive gesture toward Melusine, “to operate a unit that is seasons behind the others.”
His reasoning was perfect, if insufferable. Nell hated to be behind in fashion, but she could never bear logic. She gave me a sharp look from under her dark brows.
“I hate it when you are right,” she told Parsons. She waved a dismissive hand at me. “Very well, Thomas, you may have your ancient lurcher. It will be lost in the crowd!”
“Thank you,” I murmured to Parsons.
“My pleasure, my lord,” that worthy replied, inclining his head about three millimeters. “I will see you upon your return. Please inform me when you have intercepted your quarry.”
“That I will,” I said, slapping my hand heartily upon the viewpad upon my hip. “Good hunting!”
“The same to you, my lord,” he said.
Parsons departed with the same discretion with which he had appeared. No more than two minutes after he vanished away, Erita came beaming toward us, her robust cylindrical LAI server in tow.
“Nancy-Kaye has done the trick!” she exclaimed. “The police have agreed to let us alone, providing we do not cause any injuries. Mount up, foxhunters! Let us go find Xan. I am sure it will be a thrilling chase. I offer three bottles of my father’s finest brandy to the one who catches him!”
Cheering, we scattered to our various mechanical steeds, suited up, and strapped in.
“Away, drones!” cried Rillion Kinago Innes, our volunteer Master of the Hounds. The cylinders lifted silently into the sky, their baying limited to howls in our earpieces, and swept off to the northeast. We followed, view-hallooing happily.
Behind us, the LAIs patiently turned their attention to cleaning up the site of our party and packing away the uneaten food, overseen by the ever-efficient NCK-0722. A few securitybots with both city and Imperium markings hovered up over the eaves and scanned the area. I recalled Parsons’s cautions that the man he sought intended to sabotage communications. I grew curious as to the rest of the facts of the case, then ruthlessly pulled my attention away. I would throw all my energies into assisting him later on.
I scanned the clear azure sky ahead of me, both with my natural vision and the heads-up display in my visored helmet. As yet, the Poctil Hounds had not yet discovered any of the trace that Xan had been laying down. He would certainly have provided false trails galore. My cousin was a wily game-player and a worthy competitor. My honor was at stake, since he had been the one to capture me.
“Where do you think he is hiding?” Nell asked me, pulling Destrier up beside my Tybalt. I studied the sky. Not a cloud marred its turquoise beauty. He could not lurk there.
“Xan favors industrial facilities. Their labyrinthine layouts allow him to indulge his propensity for surprise.”
“Where is there a sufficient factory or plant in this city to conceal an individual flyer?” she asked, more to Destrier’s location database than to me.
I heard the tinny ping as the small computer went to work.
“Aha!” she exclaimed. “Hounds, two hundred seventy degrees, nine kilometers!”
Her pack veered off in that direction. I performed a similar search, and Tybalt’s onboard navigator informed me that she was heading towards the city’s power plant. I directed my Poctil Hounds to follow. If there was a trace of Xan to be sniffed out, I had faith that they would discover it before hers could, despite their newer hardware.
My cousins spread out in numerous directions behind their packs of drones. A few of them peeled off from the formation and arrowed west with us. The rest sought their fortune in other potential venues around the city. This initial seeking was the hardest part. Until we determined the quadrant he had chosen as his lair, it could take us hours of hard hunting, but I believed I knew Xan’s thinking.
We threaded in and out of Nikplig air traffic. Heavy goods vehicles tended to stay fairly low, so as to lessen the impact should they lose power and plummet to the ground. At the altitudes we were traveling, in the five to ten kilometer range, long-distance passenger transport, education caravans and tourists were the most likely to be our neighbors in the skies, keeping to well-defined airways patrolled by airborne policebots and cycle-riding officers. Still, here and there I caught disembodied glints and ripples outside the flight paths. Experience had taught me that those were single vehicles covered by Boland devices. Xan was not the only person who wished to conceal his passage. Could any of these be the person for whom Parsons was looking? That must explain the presence of so many law-enforcement agents.
Traffic thinned out to almost nothing by the time we arrived. The Nikplig power plant was exactly the kind of terrain that we adored for a game of this type. Fields of bright silver solar arrays covered the desert ground for kilometers, surrounding the bases of complex wind turbines. Here and there, a grim round tower containing a geothermal retrieval unit loomed up out of the expanse of mirrors. A complicated array of girders strung with wires and emitters lined the perimeter, intending to keep migratory flocks of birds who might think the shining panels were bodies of water from coming to grief. My Poctil Hounds began to cast about. Danae, one of my newer hounds, emitted a sharp bark. I examined her readout in my display. The trace was very faint, perhaps one particle that might or might not have belonged to Xan. They spread out around me, whimpering into my ears as they sought for more evidence of his presence.
But, hark! A slip of shadow passed across a nest of girders a hundred meters from me. I glanced up. Nothing was there that could have cast it. Xan!
I grinned. He was being too clever by half, but he could not escape being a solid body in the eyes of the sun. The Boland would translate part of the image of sunbeam striking him, but the processors were unable to completely conceal a moving image. Melusine loped out ahead of me. She took a sharp right and angled up sixty degrees. I tilted my controls to follow. She was on his scent.
“Here I come, Xan!” I chortled into my microphone. He didn’t respond. I did not expect it. He was no doubt concentrating on how to elude my hounds. “Seek!” I exhorted them.
“Where are you, Thomas?” Nell’s voice sounded in my ear. “Our packs are going mad! Xan must have sneezed upon every millimeter of this place.”
“He’s over here,” I said, forwarding my coordinates to her. “I just spotted him. My beasts are on his trail.”
“On my way!”
“Skycycles, attention, please. This is a restricted area,” said a very severe female voice. “Repeat, this is a restricted area. There are electrical and environmental hazards. Please leave at once. Repeat, please leave at once.”
“Very sorry, madam,” I said, absently, as I steered the cycle through the crossed struts. “I am Lord Thomas Kinago. We are engaged in retrieving one of our number, and will be off the premises as soon as we get him.”
I heard snickering from my cousins over the shared frequency.
“Please leave now,” the woman said. “You do not have authorization to be in this area.”
“Yes, madam. As soon as we can, madam.” I clicked off.
I glanced at the chronometer on the scope. Xan only had to elude me for two hours, then he would be considered the winner of this round, as well. Confound it! I would not have him beat me twice!
But the Poctil hounds were on the scent. The group had joined together now behind Melusine. Ahead, I caught another hint of shadow hovering close to the roof of the main generator building.
“Yoicks!” I cried.
As I bored down upon it, the specter hesitated, then lifted off, rushing toward the forest of windmill towers. I grinned ferociously. We should have a merry chase. The Poctil Hounds tightened into formation, baying hysterically in my ears. Alongside their music were the voices of my cousins.
“You found him? Where are you?” “Thomas, how did you find him so fast?” “Your machines are malfunctioning; I have him!” This last was from my cousin Nalney. My location map showed him as clear across town. Whomever he was chasing, it wasn’t Xan.
Xan was a fleeting shadow zipping in between the pylons and up between the blades of the largest turbines. His timing was perfection; he managed to flit between the gigantic white vanes without clipping a single one. The hounds followed him, but they were forced to hesitate lest they come to grief. They were programmed to avoid collisions. In this case, not only would I be subject to a swingeing fine, but a crash might put the city of Nikplig into darkness for an unforeseeable period. I wanted to avoid that.
Tybalt juddered under my bottom as I poured on all velocity. The Xan-ghost took a sharp dive, hoping to lose me among the pipes and catwalks at the base of a cluster of enormous cooling towers. My breath quickened as I leaned left, then right, then left again, matching my drones’ hurtling flight through the narrow gaps. Showers of paint chips shaken loose from the elderly conduits by the vibration of our passage rained down upon us. Melusine’s distinctive bay was the loudest, indicating she was the closest to the source of the scent. I leaned forward avidly.
I heard a loud pop! At first I feared that Xan had struck something, then green smoke filled the air. In this tight maze of pipe and concrete cylinders I couldn’t turn around. Instead, I plunged into the thick cloud.
I tried not to breathe. My eyes stung. Acid bit at my throat and the inside of my nose. Moisture ran out of my nostrils, but I couldn’t wipe it away through my faceplate.
“No fair, Xan!” I cried, coughing. “If you can’t win within the rules, then surrender!”
No answer. I blinked hard as I emerged from the smoke grenade. The Xan-shadow was nowhere in sight.
Luckily, my hounds’ detectors were more efficient than my poor senses. They led me up over the nearest cooling tower and down into a cat’s cradle of walkways. I caught a glimpse of a shadow, which retreated off to the left. The hounds followed it. I kicked Tybalt into a higher gear. We veered under a metal staircase, shocking a worker in a white jumpsuit and safety helmet into dropping its viewpad. The shadow took a hard right around the next cooling tower. The hounds, as one, pursued it.
But it appears that my faith in the aging Melusine was greater than its capabilities. Even as the pack swerved around a sharp arc, Melusine continued off in a tangent, hurtling down a narrow passageway. In my earpiece it was still baying its electronic cry, insisting that it was following the true scent.
“Confound it!” I exclaimed, turning my skycycle in its wake. I jammed my finger down upon the control on my console that ought to have recalled it. My other hounds responded, turning back from the quest. Melusine’s call was desperate. She must be nearly on top of her quarry. I had no choice but to follow.
The other hounds were behind me as I hurtled down the corridor. Windows onto the power plant’s offices opened up to either side of the concrete walkway. They must have been astonished to see me roar past, rattling the explosion-proof glass. I grinned. It would give the employees something interesting to discuss when they returned to their humble homes that evening.
I steered Tybalt up through the framework of a spiral staircase that led up and over to pipes that poured into broad, rectangular pools. I caught sight of Melusine almost skimming the surface of the water, her drives churning up a narrow wake. A second wake was visible ahead of her. I didn’t need the hound to show me my quarry any longer. I kicked Tybalt to its highest speed and stood up in the saddle. I would show Xan what I thought of his smoke grenade!
The reflection of the brilliant afternoon sun almost blinded me as I closed in upon my quarry. I could not see Xan directly, true, but I gauged where his cycle must be based upon the angle of the sun, the shadow, and the point of the wake. As soon as he left the pool I would lose him. My timing must be absolutely perfect.
“Steady, Tybalt,” I said. I let go of the handles, then grabbed them again as the cycle lurched. “Steady! Commence autopilot!”
This time when I let go, Tybalt remained on an even keel. I braced myself. Waves leaped and curled around the rear of my cycle, making it surge like a speedboat. Xan’s shadow was nearly to the lip of the pool.
Steady.
Steady.
Ready!
I sprang.
I threw my arms around virtual nothingness. For a moment I thought I had missed him, but my head and chest impacted with a hard body.
My momentum knocked him loose from the saddle of his cycle. He tilted over. I held on tightly. We hurtled onto the concrete walkway. Pain lanced through my shoulder. I landed hard on the arm that Nell had struck earlier, doubling the bruise. The two of us rolled over and over together, wrapped in the drape from the Boland device. Clattering accompanied our motion, as if I had knocked the housing off a part of his cycle.
“I caught you, Xan!” I cried, swiping at folds of cloth. It changed color and pattern again and again as I fought my way free. I saw my own hands, then the rectangular pools with my hounds hovering above them, then a man’s head. It was round, almost spherical, with close-clipped black hair and a tawny complexion like that of my cousin Jil. Our eyes met, and his went enormous with shock.
“Wait a moment, you’re not Xan!” I said. “Who are you? Did he hire you to draw us off the scent? That’s strictly against the rules!”
For answer, the man rolled onto his back and struck out at me with both feet. I gasped at the impact. The force knocked me backwards. Nimbly, the man rolled over one shoulder and came a standing position.
“No need to be rough!” I protested, rubbing my sore ribs. “It was pure mistaken identity.”
I noticed an object on the ground, a featureless, gray impact case about forty centimeters by twenty-five with a fold-up handle on one of the narrow sides. That must have been the source of the clattering noise when I had knocked him off his cycle. The least I could do was return his property to him. I reached for it. He reached for it. My arms were longer and I was a bit quicker, so I had it by the handle before he could touch it. His eyes widened. I held it out to him. He rushed at me, seeking to shove me over backward. Out of pure defensive reaction, I swung the box. It hit him in the shoulder, sending him sprawling.
“My dear man, I am so sorry,” I said. I went to help him up with my free hand, but he sprang to his feet again, backed away from me, and fled.
As he ran off, I gawked after him. He was not my cousin. I had assaulted a stranger. Undoubtedly I owed him an apology, although he wasn’t waiting around to receive it.
But as he ran, Melusine left the pack of hounds and flew after him, her signal baying in my ear.
“He’s not Xan, you silly creature!” I called to her crossly. “Follow Xan’s scent, not his!”
But I had a sudden revelation. Back on the roof, the drone’s sensor compartment had come open. Xan’s cloth had fallen out… And I would have bet a week’s vacation on a luxury space liner that the scent-marker that Parsons had replaced belonged to this man instead.
An innocent man would not have run away. He would have threatened me with arrest for assault. This was Parsons’s fugitive!
I looked down at the case in my hand. It was without a doubt the infernal device whose existence Parsons feared. I glanced around at the power plant, concerned for the wellbeing of the unsuspecting employees, and came to a decision. Since he had not had time to secret it, the device would not be armed and hence not dangerous. Still, I was convinced he would try to come back for it. He must be apprehended before he could call for reinforcements. But I had my own. I ran for my skycycle. With hands almost trembling with excitement and reaction, I secured the case in the carrier on the back, and kicked the machine into life. I opened the family frequency.
“Nell!” I shouted, as my cycle lifted off the ground.
“What? Did you find Xan? The rest of us have been around and around this wretched plant. Have you uncovered his hiding place?”
“No! Nell, do you still have Melusine’s frequency on your console?”
“Of course I do, Thomas. Why?”
I peered ahead. The man had disappeared down a flight of concrete steps. I could hear the echo of his passage as well as Melusine’s cry.
“Follow it! She is chasing a man,” I said. “I believe him to be a miscreant that the government wishes to apprehend.”
Nell sounded bored.
“Oh, Thomas, what do you want me to do about it? I’m not the police.”
“Follow her! Head him off!” I cried. “I will take care of the rest. This is more fun than chasing Xan!”
“Really? All right. Come on, everyone! Thomas is pursuing a felon!”
I smiled.
Even the fastest of human beings are no match for airborne drones, let alone skycycles. Although the round-headed man had a head-start and what must have been an intimate knowledge of the plant, he no longer had his Boland device to hide from the security cameras in use all over the campus. In any case, he could not elude the elderly, outdated Poctil Hound, Melusine. I followed his progress down the concrete stairs, across the broad industrial campus, and into the midst of my cousins, who swooped out of the sky, shrieking and whooping. They circled him, laughing like drunken university students on senior prank day, their engines drowning out his yells and cries of protest.
They could logically be credited for his capture, but it was I who dove into their midst, I who leaped off Tybalt’s back and tackled him, and I who reached for my viewpad and tapped the icon at the top right on my Favorites menu.
“Parsons,” I said, as the man struggled fruitlessly in my grasp, “I believe I have someone who belongs to you.”
“How did you know that this person was wanted by the authorities?” Nell asked, as the Imperium Security vehicle left, all lights flashing, with their fuming prisoner and the plastic crate. Parsons had arrived with them. He had favored me with a single shallow nod, which was as much praise as a chestful of medals. Then he had disappeared, as if he was never there to start with. My cousins were agog, as were the executives and security personnel of the power plant, with all the excitement. “Are you taking up law enforcement as an enthusiasm?”
I emitted a short laugh. The bruises left by the twin footprints on my chest made breathing a trifle uncomfortable.
“Great stars, no!” I said. “But one can’t help seeing those images of wanted felons go by on the tridee features. I knew I had seen him before.” It was a white lie, but one that would preserve Nell’s image of me as her foolish big brother.
Erita descended upon me with an aggrieved expression writ large, her helmet under her arm.
“Thomas, you have ruined my afternoon,” she said. “This person was not part of our entertainment, and Xan is still out there!”
I leaned close, drawing Erita and Nell into my confidence.
“I have the most marvelous idea,” I said, dropping my voice for dramatic effect.
“What?” asked Nell breathlessly.
I fancied I could feel my eyes twinkling with mischief.
“Let’s leave Xan here. We have already had more excitement than we would normally enjoy in a month. We captured genuine prey today. Mother expects us for cocktails at seven. We have just enough time to hurry back and tidy up before the first drink is poured. Xan will wonder for a while where we have all gone. He can catch us up when he figures it out.”
“Thomas!” Erita said, taking a step back with her eyes wide. Whether or not she was feigning shock I could not quite discern. “You are not thinking of taking revenge upon Xan because you lost the last round, are you?”
“Not at all,” I said, assuming a bored expression that was no more genuine than hers. “I have had as much fun as I can handle. I prefer to limit my pursuits to ones more worthy of my time. Besides, I believe that the Nikplig police would like to see the back of us, as helpful as we have just been.”
Erita rolled this truth over in her mind.
“True,” she admitted.
“You win,” Nell said, throwing up her hands. “You can have Melusine. You’re getting to be just as elderly as she is. With an attitude like that you might as well give yourself over to becoming a useful member of society.”
“Perish the thought!” I exclaimed, stung at the insult. It had come a little too close to a truth I would not admit even to her. “Come on, then! I will race you home. I’ll show you who is getting elderly.”
Copyright © 2014 Jody Lynn Nye
Jody Lynn Nye's numerous works of science fiction and fantasy include An Unexpected Apprentice and its sequel, A Forthcoming Wizard, Applied Mythology, Advanced Mythology, and others. She has collaborated with New York Times best-selling author Anne McCaffrey on The Death of Sleep, The Ship Who Won, Doona and other novels, and with another New York Times best-selling author, Robert Asprin, on books in his “Myth” series. The preceding story is set in her Imperium series, which includes novels A View from the Imperium, and its sequel Fortunes of the Imperium.