An hour later, Wheeler groaned mentally as they stood on top of the building that contained their assigned targets. Of course, pretty boy wasn't just on his team. It was worse. What team? Just him and mister never-met-a-pussy-he-wouldn't-fuck. He'd better explain the facts of life to this loser before he had to half kill him.
"You wanted to know what you signed on for? In exchange for killing some Indowy wimps, we get our entire debt paid off, plus a bonus. Almost half the cost of a ticket back to Earth. This is a sweet deal, and if you fuck it up for me, I swear to God I will keep that pretty face of yours uglified for years. Get me?" David, of course, wouldn't be going back before he could afford that plastic surgery and a nice retirement on Earth. He was tired of the stink of sliced and diced Posleen.
"Holy shit." Karnstadt was too busy seeing dollar signs to give a fuck about the threats. "No fear, dude. You just point me at who I gotta kill for that, and we'll get along fine."
One plus. The twit usually did take point on recon patrols, emplacing a lot of sensors, and did, Wheeler admitted grudgingly, kill his share of feral Posleen normals in the process. As much as he was out front, if Karnstadt wasn't pretty good he'd have been thresh for some ravenous carnosauroid moron by now. Okay. Whatever.
"Right. The first task is finding each of these little buggers, and there is a priority to pulling them in. The most important ones—don't ask me why they're important, I dunno—have been called to a meeting like where their debts usually get called in. It's like it would be with us, only the Indowy just let the poor bastards starve to death. We've got this little gadget—kinda a Galactified buckley." Wheeler held up a black box about the size and shape of a box of cigarettes. Neither man had ever seen an AID before. "It can find the headset the critters use when they make stuff—the specific one for our target, and tell if it's in use, and where it is. We just follow this box's directions. It talks. Right, box?"
"I am not a box, I am not a buckley, I am an AID, and yes, I can talk." The AID sounded resigned rather than snippy. It had been in the unassigned pool for what, to a machine that made a supercomputer seem like a digital watch, was an eternity. It had never met user support staff from pre-war Earthtech companies. It neither knew nor cared that those staffers had existed. Still, it and they were kindred souls in long-suffering exasperation with the average user.
"Yeah, but aren't some of these guys going to figure out what's coming and run? What if they aren't at work? What good is that thing then, huh? Thing doesn't even have a screen." Karnstadt took an instant dislike to the little box, as if sensing its own opinion of him.
"I can tell you where their quarters are. Other Indowy would be most reluctant to hide them," the AID said.
The two men looked at each other. Wheeler could tell that the twit was thinking the same thing that he was. Both had been born on Earth, and knew if they were caught up in a shrinking net of cops, or a gang, the last place they would go was home. Why would these bastards need anyone to hide them? The building was huge.
"How many of these buggers do we have to kill to get paid?" Karnstadt asked.
"If you kill every individual I find for you, you will have completed your contract." The voice emanated from the box in a way that made David want to cross himself, despite being a long-lapsed Catholic. It was as if a human being were standing right there next to him. Gave him the creeps.
"Yeah? What if the sucker bugs out between when you find him and when you actually get us there?" Garth Karnstadt had run enough cons himself to have a keen sense of when a con might be coming at him.
The AID sounded reluctant as it agreed, "You are only obligated if I get you within range of your eyes, where you can see the specified individual."
"Not good enough. All these little greenies look alike to me. You have to have some way of pointing the specific guy out to us and keeping him pointed out when he tries to get lost in the crowd."
"In all probability, an Indowy will not attempt to flee," the AID lied smoothly.
"You didn't promise to point him out. If you don't keep him positively identified until we've got our hands on him, the deal's off."
Wheeler restrained himself from breaking into the conversation. Yeah, he wanted the prize, but not enough to take his hand off the game. He wouldn't have thought of bargaining with the thing to tighten the agreement up. Maybe the other guy wasn't a complete twit after all.
The AID's tone was positively frosty as, after a noticeable pause, it agreed. "Acceptable."
"I've never seen one, but I've heard of these things. If you can make them change terms for you, the changes are tight. Official. Just like a supervisor or fucking el—Darhel putting it down with his own voice." Karnstadt nodded at the box.
"Thanks. These bastards would dick over their own mothers for a buck," Wheeler was less circumspect in front of the AID than his partner, but his voice held no particular rancor, just acceptance. And the observation, although the biology was necessarily metaphorical, was simple truth.
"So, you got any advice on the best way to do this?" Karnstadt asked the AID.
"I am not programmed to plan killing," it said distastefully.
"Wait a minute. You can tell if these guys are on their phones or head-thingamajigs or whatever. How many of them are down in there with their whatzis on?" Wheeler pointed downward into the building.
"Four hundred thirty-seven," the machine answered.
"Any of those the same as the ones that showed up to that meeting?"
"No."
"How many are in the meeting, and where's that?"
A ghost-transparent hologram of the building came into being in front of the two men. Built with antigravity technology, it was the typical Indowy squared-off soda straw. Troops from early in the Posleen war had compared some Indowy cities to an order of french fries, only organized. Notably, the comparison had come from troops who had spent the prior three months on a near-exclusive diet of MREs.
This particular french fry had a red dot in one corner, almost a third of the way down. The dot blinked wickedly as the AID spoke, "Two hundred nineteen targets are in room fifty-seven point twenty-five point twenty-five."
"Uh, yeah. So can you show dots for the rest of them?"
Flares of red coalesced into fine mists of dots grouped together in various locations throughout the building.
"Which one has the most lumped together?" Karnstadt asked.
"Waitaminute," Wheeler broke in while the AID obediently started one group blinking. "If we whack the guys in the meeting room, by the time we get to another group, all the guys in the building will have scattered. You can't keep this shit quiet—no, I mean the screaming you can, but these little fuckers will be able to communicate. If we go to that lump first, then the guys in the meeting will have scattered, along with everybody else. This ain't gonna work."
"Our projections are that one human is sufficiently violent to operate alone," the AID said.
"No, huh-uh," Karnstadt shook his head. "I don't care if these guys are pacifists, if we don't have two guys closing in on them from each side, at least, they're gonna run. You need a minimum of two teams, and even then you're only going to get the first two lumps of the critters."
"That evaluation is not consistent with our best projections," the AID said.
"Your projections are shit," Wheeler pronounced. "Even if you're using combat experience, all you got is Posleen."
"Negative. Our systems contain substantial data and analysis of human on human violence," the machine said distastefully.
"Indowy aren't human," Karnstadt said.
"We have far more experience of the Indowy than you." The AID's tone was patronizing as hell. "You may back out of the agreement and forfeit payment if you choose. A fee for the shuttle service, and early contract termination, will be charged. Are you choosing to abandon your agreement?"
"Hey, we warned you. If you want to ignore us and decide you know best, that's fine, and we'll do it, but we don't take the blame and lose our pay if you're wrong. Right?" Karnstadt glared at the little black box balefully.
"Agreed," the AID conceded grudgingly.
"Okay, it's your dime. Which lump of these guys, altogether, do you want dead worst?"
"We . . . find the members of this group the most adverse to our interests." The AID choked it out, as if it had inherited the inhibitions of its creators, making the big clump in the work bay flash a bright, blinky red.
"Got it. When we get there, you just highlight these guys in order of the ones you want, um, gone the most. Works for you?" Wheeler asked the box. He found it easier to talk to it if he treated it like a field radio with someone on the other end.
The AID's long pause did not appear unusual to either man, who had never heard the term "processing speed." They therefore didn't know to infer distance communication with speed of light lag. The machine, of course, didn't enlighten them.
"First priority is painted red, second is yellow, third is green," it said.
"You're the boss," Wheeler spoke for both of them, talking to the imaginary man behind the box.
The door from the roof down was, of course, unlocked. It didn't even have a lock—what need in a species with no theft?
Neither man had ever been in an Indowy building before. Not being Indowy-raised with their height deliberately stunted, they had to walk crouched to avoid banging their heads on the low ceilings. Karnstadt especially had to work to squash his two-meter frame under a ceiling not much over a meter and a half. They wouldn't have been able to move through the crowded halls at all if the Indowy hadn't seen two armed, vicious omnivores and sought any door to make themselves scarce. That both men were grinning only made them more frightening to the denizens. This particular grin, combined with stony eyes lit with the barest hint of an eager twinkle, would have frightened humans, too.
"Hey, look at us, we're Moses," Wheeler joked, gesturing at the parting wave of Indowy opening before them as they went.
"Mow what?" Karnstadt echoed.
"Twit."
A brief flicker of hurt crossed the blond man's handsome face before his attention shifted back to the job.
Led to a tube by the AID's holographic show-me light, the men bounced to the access level for the first work bay. As rarely as Prall was used for construction of large items, contracts still could change over the centuries. The killers stooped through the door and into the bay the AID indicated.
Whatever else Indowy were, they weren't stupid. Unfortunately for them, they also weren't very fast runners. Wheeler felt like he was in a giant game of whack-a-mole, one of the odd, retro machines in the arcade back in town. He and Karnstadt were really getting their cardio in, chasing the little buggers with glowing red dots hovering over their heads. Yeah, guns were nice ranged weapons, but there were all these tanks of stuff in the way and ricochets were a bitch. Besides, they didn't know exactly what would happen if whatever was in those tanks spilled out of bullet holes. It was proving safer and more efficient to just chase the buggers down with a machete. It only took one whack to drop most of them, like they went into shock immediately on being sliced.
The Galplas floor must have sloped ever so slightly in places, because Wheeler noticed that the blue ichor, when he hit something spurty, tended to trickle in a specific direction rather than pool. He noticed this absently, without stopping the grisly work. The object of the game was to kill as many of these buggers in as little time as possible, so they could satisfy the damn black box and get on to the next job. He chuckled slightly, despite his jumpsuit getting uncomfortable from the soaking it was taking. It was the first time he'd ever felt blue over killing something.
It really wasn't all that much blood, considering. The little buggers were so small, not at all like killing Posleen. Besides, Posleen fought back. Red, yellow, orange. You usually ended up soaked to the armpits between one thing and another if you ran into a batch of them. Unfortunately, there were always too few humans to sweep through fast enough to keep isolated ferals from joining together into packs, occasionally even a damn God King. So this blue shit was new, at least. But ye gods, the smell! It was like hot copper mixed with sour milk. Oh, well. Nobody's blood and guts smelled very good, when you got right down to it. Better them than him. Lot less risk than killing Posleen, too.
Of course some of them got away. The AID was surprised, even if Wheeler and Karnstadt were not.
"They ran away," the machine stated unnecessarily.
"No duh, box dude," Karnstadt answered it, breathing hard.
"This was quite unexpected." The AID sounded perplexed.
"Uh, yeah. That would be unexpected by you," Wheeler told it.
"The other targets are fleeing the building," it said.
"It's your money. Where do you want us to go and who do you want us to kill next?"
While Karnstadt took a tour of the room, finishing each living Indowy with a blade through the brain, Wheeler held the box, getting indigo blood all over it. AIDs were, of course, incapable of shuddering.
There was a notable pause before the AID answered, "The intriguers in the meeting room are not yet leaving. A number of them are high priority. Go there."
"Hey, I want you to notice I'm being thorough," Karnstadt told it. "No claiming later we didn't do our job. If their medics manage to save any of these midgets, it won't be because of us."
"Noted."
Three buildings over, a very agitated Indowy clan head had closeted himself away in a side office, currently co-occupied by one Cphxtht, here to inspect the progress on a particularly tricky order for an amphibious musical instrument. The Indowy Maeloo was begging.
"O unfortunate but talented craftsman, I fail to see what this internal Darhel response to intriguers, while very bad, has to do with us?" The Tchpth jittered from a complicated dance with the feet to his left, to his right set of feet, and back.
"Revulsion?" Maeloo, having no logic to offer, fell back on deep instinct and base emotion.
Cphxtht considered, dance changing to forward and back, almost a rocking motion. "That argument . . . is acceptable. Most persuasive clan head, I will carry your plea."
"Unnecessary." At the top of the ceiling, a Himmit detached itself from its smooth and seamless blend with the curved geometric design that ringed the top of the office walls, returning to its natural purplish-gray color. "I will carry the message and those who come. You and others who wish to leave Prall will be on the top floor of building—" The creature gave a string of designators, the equivalent of an Indowy street address, and named a local time some five Earth hours hence.
The Maeloo agreed with alacrity, even though he knew that only perhaps twenty-five percent of the most critical Bane Sidhe personnel would be able to make the rendezvous, and even then the survivors would be crammed together at a density that would be uncomfortable even for his race.
The Himmit was not indulging in charity. In exchange for the transport, it would want to hear the story of every refugee. In detail.
Far more important than the transport itself, the Himmit would need to know where to take its passengers, and would wish to know if similar events were transpiring on other Galactic worlds. It would, therefore, take the rare step of using advanced communication to carry another race's message. In return, the Indowy Maeloo and any other clan head aboard would affect not to notice that the information traveled so much faster than it ought.
The small cabin was empty except for himself and Himmit Harlas, their rescuer and host. Accomplishing this feat had required cramming the Indowy outside even more tightly together, but it was only for a few minutes. The resulting discomfort didn't matter to the refugees. They were Bane Sidhe, they were terrified, and in any case, Indowy did not question the orders of a clan head.
The walls of the cabin were the same purplish-gray as a Himmit in its natural state. Maeloo supposed it was the other entity's idea of restful. He'd known Himmit, of course, but this was the first time in his long years he'd had occasion to leave Prall, and therefore his first time encountering a Himmit on its own ground.
"Are you ready for your call?" the Himmit asked.
"Yes. Have you initiated the connection?"
"It should be coming in momentarily."
The image of a sword sticking out of a stone appeared in the air.
"Himmit Harlas. What brings you to contact me?" the sword sang.
"The call is on my behalf, Master," Maeloo began. "There has been a catastrophe on Prall. The plan is in shambles."
"Explain."
The sword apparently wanted the story in the same level of detail as Himmit Harlas would have expected later. For Maeloo, this was something of a relief, as it meant that he only had to relate the horror once.
"Your people believed it was a good idea to take sides between business groups?" The disbelief came through despite the harmonics.
"While it was not my choice, as my own clan has no people involved with loading and unloading ships, my understanding is that nobody, not even the wisest on Prall, foresaw the actual collapse of a Darhel clan. Some clans did a few individual favors that should not have had more than a marginal impact on the fortunes of the Epetar Group. Business is not my people's strength. Are we to blame for the bad decisions of Darhel? We did not orchestrate this, nor did we take a side. What, for us, do the fortunes of Gistar and Epetar matter? My information on those events is incomplete, for obvious reasons." Maeloo shuddered.
"True. Being used to a group's benefit or detriment is not the same thing as choosing support or opposition. I will help you. As you can see, your people are known, not secret, as are your hiding places and methods. Go to Earth. While it is, of course, obvious that the Bane Sidhe are quite active among the humans, their primary location is, as yet, uncompromised. I can protect you there until I sort out this mess and can formulate some plan for rebuilding. This is, indeed, catastrophic. Nearly a thousand years of work, multiple generations." The sword hummed for a moment unhappily. "Earth. Go to Earth. And do not annoy me with your petty differences with the humans. I have helped you. You must hope they are willing to do the same. I take my leave."
Maeloo faced the now-empty space grimly. "Himmit Harlas? If I may impose on you and one of your fellows once more, I would like to send a message to Adenast."
"Certainly. This is a very good story. A very good story indeed. Although I am personally sorry for your circumstances, of course."
Michelle O'Neal sat on a low bench, against the wall of her construction bay, which could have accommodated several modest airplane hangars from Earth and still been uncrowded. One wall of the bay faced the street outside, with great doors through which finished product could be flown out on the Galactic equivalent of an anti-grav forklift. This was, of course, not the top floor of her building. That space was reserved for the really big jobs.
The mentat quashed her very unprofessional case of project envy and looked down at her hands, which rested on her knees. Said knees were laid down extremely slantwise of her feet. Had they not been, they'd have been propped halfway to her chin, as the bench was built for Indowy, not humans. She had chosen the seat in deference to the being beside her. It was in her interests—O'Neal interests—to keep the Indowy Roolnai happy. Or, rather, it had been, as the balance of favors had lately been very much in his direction. Until now.
"Allow me to be certain I understand." She picked a tiny fleck of lint off her brown mentat robe. "After breaking with humanity and Clan O'Neal so severely that you almost jeopardized my entire slate of contracts you are now coming to me for help."
Unquestionably she would help them, although she personally disapproved. Intriguers all, it had finally gotten them in trouble on a scale that caused her to blink. Her disapproval made no difference to clan policy. Even as acting clan head, she would not make major policy changes away from what she knew to be her grandfather's political positions. She didn't disapprove quite as much as she used to, but she still disapproved. She was, therefore, not entirely displeased that a bit of Grandfather's likely response of "rubbing it in" was indicated.
"The work goes well." Roolnai indicated the scaffolding where a chunk of the orbital module had been elevated, ready to be formed and fitted together with its next unwieldy piece as soon as the latter finished final curing in the tank below.
Michelle nodded, acknowledging not just the compliment, but the reminder that no harm had been done to her schedule, and her workers had returned to their jobs, entirely through intercession of this one Indowy. The head of Clan Roolnai had been instrumental in splitting the Bane Sidhe—Michelle knew far more about intriguer politics than she cared to clutter her mind with. However, he had also been instrumental in saving her from defaulting on her contracts and getting her debts called. She was, at least, safe from that for the immediate future no matter what else happened. Her debts were an Epetar asset and would be locked up in contract court escrow for quite some time before being assigned out to another group as part of the collapsed group's bankruptcy settlement.
While she personally felt no end of satisfaction at any misfortune for Epetar, Michelle O'Neal was frankly appalled that she had somehow gotten herself in up to her neck in the intriguers' whole umpty-jillion times cursed conspiracy. She was still in her first century, so she was rather young, but this was the most frustrating thing she could remember happening to her in her entire life—other than the war. And the situation showed no signs of moving in any direction she could use to extricate herself. It just did not stop. Like now.
"You are too tactful to say it, respected one, but I did share quite heavily in the making of this unfortunate situation." She was angry at the way the other Indowy clans had been prepared to throw her to the wolves. After all, hers was a major branch of Clan O'Neal, in several respects, and had always dealt honorably and met obligations, and more, with everyone. A little more consideration in how they handled the split situation and her workforce should not have been too much to expect. Of course they would have had to pull out if the split remained, but she should not have had to beg for them to allow time for her to move replacement workers in.
"You can keep them moving for now. This debacle has the potential to wipe out almost the entirety of my clan. Assessing the level of risk for this type of intrigue," she loaded the word with distaste, "is not my field. I will be consulting an expert for that assessment, and will inform you promptly if the risk is unacceptable."
Michelle was not blind to the irony that the person at the core of the Bane Sidhe split would be the person with the decision power over whether to put it together again. Cally simply had a talent for finding her way directly into the middle of turmoil. Michelle hid a grimace, reflecting that her sister probably could be used as a compass for trouble. She'd been that way since they were kids. You'd think that the little brat would learn. The mentat briefly wondered if there was an associated sub-quantum level interaction that could be isolated, before dismissing the idea as ridiculous and returning her attention to her guest.
"I would not ask it if I had any other choice," Roolnai replied. His voice carried overtones that he regretted becoming so beholden to the O'Neals almost as much as he regretted the present emergency. "We are assured at the highest level that the location called Base One is secure. For the time being."
"The instability of the situation is such that we are all having to make difficult choices between bad alternatives," Michelle said grimly. "As now, for me. Communicating promptly for this is going to drop my efficiency by more than one percent for the two weeks afterwards. And I do insist on making my consultation face to face. No intermediaries for this."
With his responsibilities, Roolnai would know exactly how massive a resource drain that was.
"If I divert three adepts, plus equipment, to your use for that period, will it help enough?" The Indowy looked concerned.
Michelle nodded, "It is enough to keep my schedule from slipping." Which it was. Barely. And yet, pulling high level Sohon technicians out of their existing projects and reallocating them was highly inefficient. As her sister would put it, it was not chump change. Not having to foot the entire bill made the situation better than it could have been.
"We will do what we can," she told him. "If you will excuse me now, I am going to have very little time to spare. Your people will take some time to reach their jump point out. I will make my consultation before then and let you know."