Northern dreaming

This is the last chapter I’m posting on the blog. I may be able to publish the novel on Amazon this week, I’m tentatively aiming for the 20th, and the two others will also start a free promo which will last until the 24th on that day. I’ll need to see how my final edits will go (or if I decide I will need to edit more).

So, next week perhaps more art, for a change, since at least right now the problems I have been having with my hand seem to be in control – it shakes, sometimes, but not so often and not so badly I can’t finish pieces. Or finish them well enough to keep them, I did draw during the last nine to ten months, and paint occasionally too but most of the resulting pieces went straight to trash. As I have said before the main problem seems to be with my shoulder, which got badly inflamed last spring, but while that was work related so it’s not completely sure it wont happen again, I can’t exactly stop working, maybe I can keep it at least from getting as bad as it did then. Last winter and spring I’m afraid I just kept hoping it would heal on its own, or go away if I ignored it, until it finally got bad enough that I needed cortisone injections, and even after that weeks of work before I started to get where I could again do fine motor tasks well with that hand. 🙂

Chapter Ten

It took them a while to get there, but when they did the fortress turned out to be quite impressive.

The flyers were hid in a natural cave outside the walls. Wide and just high enough that they could be flown in, very slow and very carefully. Rahan noted that. He was a good enough pilot, but with that parking place he would not be able to make any kind of fast exit. If he ran he’d have to make sure nobody was right at his heels when he got here.

The rebels didn’t seem to leave any guards in place. Not human ones anyway. But it was always possible there was something automated, or that somebody or several somebodies would come back here later.

The route from the cave to the fortress showed no marks of having been used previously. There were only a couple of large trees here, but plenty of young saplings, and it was bit of a fight to push through the thicket to the fallen gates of the huge building.

The fortress seemed to be made completely of stone, huge, smooth blocks fitted seamlessly together with no signs of mortar between them. Rahan gawked until he nearly tripped on a small bush, after which he concentrated more on his feet than on sightseeing.

“Lida, this was built soon after the colonists landed, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “The stories tell of magic.”

“Yep, that’s what the construction robots are, pretty much. Or were. The ones in use now aren’t any more advanced than the ones these people had. Probably quite a bit less so.”

So much had been lost during the dark centuries. They still were in many ways much less advanced, technologically anyway, than their ancestors had been. The only magic uniquely belonging to their time was the FTL drive, their grav and stasis machines, all offsprings of the same scientific discovery.

There was a big courtyard, surrounded by massive walls with turrets on the corners and on both sides of the main gates. The living and working quarters, as well as storage, had probably been in the two keeps standing on both sides of that courtyard. There were also some smaller buildings there, less well constructed, made of much smaller stones and with the help of mortar, and in a more ruined state, looking kind of embarrassed standing in the shadows of the older and much superior versions. A new, smaller group of people met them when they got to a door leading in, and the people from the flyers started to disperse. A man, taller than most of the locals Rahan had seen so far, seemed to be in charge here.

So another group had gotten here first.

Lida didn’t seem to be particularly fond of of this new Maasvat leader, she just nodded curtly to him before turning to Rahan.

“I’ll take you to your room. It’s probably better if you stay there, I’ll see that everything you might need will be brought to you.”

Rahan glanced at her, but she seemed to be wholly concentrated on her feet and the ground just ahead. Here it was mostly covered in stone, with occasional tuffs of grass, some stray saplings and small bushes growing here and there, but the ancient paving was rather uneven and there were fallen stone blocks, from the newer buildings, here and there.

“So what am I, a prisoner or a guest?”

“It’s better, for both you and us, if you don’t know all that much about us.”

He was forced to admit that made sense.

***

The room she led him to was a bare cubicle of stone, with no windows. But there was a door. Old, made of thick, sturdy planks reinforced with steel bars.

And with a lock.

Old, mechanical one.

When Lida left she said somebody would be coming soon to bring him bedding, water for both a little washing and drinking, and some food. She also asked him to stay inside and wait.

As soon as she was out he went to the door to listen, then when the echoes of her steps had died down he slipped out.

The corridor was empty.

He spend a little examining the lock, then made a quick survey of the nearby rooms and the corridor. In one room there was a newer looking pile of trash in one corner. Rahan sorted through it and found some short lengths of rusted, thick wire, of which he pocketed a couple of pieces, plus a badly rusted but still serviceable knife. Well, it wasn’t sharp anymore, but he figured it would probably not snap under pressure, at least not immediately.

He secured it under the waist of his trousers, then returned to his room to wait.

***

The Ytjar program found the heat signatures of the two flyers and reported it to the human controllers. They eyeballed the bits available at first, then gave the data to another program in hopes that it might be able to find out what the actual destination of the flyers might have been.

No such luck. All they could get was the general area, and that was several tens of square klicks wide.

Their supervisor did get a permission to airborne surveillance of the area and four armed drones were launched. He would have needed about twice that number to have some sort of surety of getting results.

The man decided to send yet another request for a higher budget even though he was fairly sure that would lead to nothing – of it it did the end result would most likely be new personal flyers, or maybe vacations, to some higher ups. Or maybe some nice jewelry to their wives or mistresses.

But one needed to keep up appearances. If there was trouble due to unfulfilled duties he needed to be able to show that he had done his best.

***

A woman Rahan had not seen before brought him the bedding and food Lida had promised. He waited, obediently, until she had set them down and thanked her as she left and closed the door behind her.

He was not exactly surprised to hear the click of the key being turned in that lock.

The food was a loaf of drying bread and hard cheese, but at least the water was clear and there was plenty of it. Rahan contemplated them for a moment, a bit worried that the rebels might try to drug him to make sure he’d stay where he was supposed, then carefully tasted just a little bit of everything. When he still felt quite normal about half an hour later he ate and drank some more.

The sun was up by then.

Which time would be safer to do some sneaking around, day or night? Would he dare to wait until the next night?

Maybe not. The rebels had spend most of last night on the run. They had to be at least as tired as he himself was. They would probably sleep at least part of the day, and perhaps be more active again during the night. Dark would not offer much of a cover from the Ytjar, or from the police, but at least it mostly eliminated the risk of being seen by some ordinary citizen who might then alert the authorities.

The peons of this planet might not like their overlords, but in this type of systems the ones who squealed about suspicious people or activities – much less gave them people who really were up to no good, from the lords’ point of view – tended to be well rewarded by their masters, so as long as peons could do that without being caught by their fellow peons the temptation would be great. And while this area was not permanently inhabited, he had gotten the impression that it was still used quite a bit – sometimes by people on the run, but also by hunters, loggers, people gathering berries or mushrooms or tending the half wild pigs the peons kept, and to great extent depended on for their meat…

Yes, day might really be more likely time for the rebels to rest, and for him to take a look around.

Rahan ate a little bit more but drank a lot on his third mini meal, then decided to risk a short nap, confident that he would be able to wake up after an hour or two. He was scared enough by now that his internal alarm clock should be well primed to go off when he wanted it to.

He profoundly regretted the fact that before landing he had spend a lot more time looking up potentially fun things to do close to the port rather than trying to get any kind of real overview of the local system and its parts, and how they worked. What kind of resources the officials had, what kind of surveillance systems, or weaponry, how many men, what the individual nobles might have access to… and it was highly likely that if he had really dug into those Corps databases the AI had onboard – which was most of the not secret ones – he might have even found some snippets of Lida’s Maasvat.

As it was he was forced to plan almost completely without any real information. Just lots of presumptions and guesses. Not good.

As he lay down on the makeshift bed he wondered what Ryn was right then doing

He really missed the big guy.

***

Rahan woke around midday. The room was getting a bit warm then, but when the picked the lock and opened the door he was met with a blast of heat which almost reminded him of the equatorial deserts of the larger continent on the Shemasharra home planet.

The clothes he had were not particularly well suited to this kind of weather, the cheap synthetic cloth did neither breathe nor let moisture through well, so after only a few minutes he was drenched, the fabric clinging to his skin in a most unpleasant manner.

After some thought he went back to his room, took off his garish orange tunic and used the knife he had picked up earlier to cut a hole in the very thin and nicely dark grey blanket he had been given.

Well, ‘cut’ was perhaps an exaggeration since the knife had no edge to cut with. But the point was still pointy enough that he managed to push it through the blanket on several spots, after which he could tear the fabric between those holes until he had a big enough a hole to fit his head through.

As a poncho the blanket was ugly, and still something too warm for today, but he hoped it might make him at least a little bit less visible as it was also long enough to cover the lime colored trousers nearly down to his knees. Not to mention covering his pale torso and arms – he had spend a lot of time outdoors during the previous months, but since he had been quite well covered in both UV proof clothing and sunblock during those times he didn’t have a tan worth mentioning. The best one could have said that he was pale rather than pasty white.

He wondered briefly what would happen if he ran into any of the rebels, then shrugged. Most likely they would just drag him back here. If not… by now he doubted he would gain anything by being nice and obedient to them.

The first thing he did was to check rest of the floor he was in, but the rooms and corridors of the place were empty, empty of people and empty of anything potentially useful. So next he headed towards the ground floors. His room was on the third floor of the smaller keep. He figured the rebels would be inside the same building, most of them anyway, when Lida had been bringing him here he had seen a couple of men carrying things in.

Possibly ground floor.

The place was eerily quiet. Only thing he heard was the slight sound of the gentle wind from the outside. No birds sang, no rodents flitted across the floor anywhere.

And no humans.

Rahan reached the ground floor and found himself in a larger, long and narrow hallway about two stories high, with lots of mostly doorless doorways dotting the walls – some up the wall on the level of what would have been the second floor which meant there had originally been a floor there, made of something which had since either decayed to the point that there was nothing left, or maybe been reused for something else.

He turned towards the direction he thought the main gate was in. He’d need to find the door which led out. The stairs he had taken down were not the same ones Lida had used when she had led him to the room. He had thought he’d have a better chance not to be discovered if he used the other staircase he had found. Only now he was somewhat confused over exactly where he was in relation to what he had seen on the way in.

When he was about halfway through he heard a slight sound coming from a narrow side corridor.

Snores?

Some more sneaking and he found a room where five men were sleeping.

The guns tempted him for a moment, but right now he was still unsure as to what would be his best course – was he going to run now, or still wait a little while to see how things might develop – so he didn’t try to steal any of them.

The other rebels were probably somewhere close.

Once he got out he noticed a small twisting corridor running next to what he thought might be the outer wall – it was not straight, but neither had the outer walls of the keep been when he had seen them from the outside – and took it. The outer wall guess turned out to be right when he first found a few very narrow window holes opening to the courtyard, and then a door – not just a doorway, the door was there too, and in relatively good condition – and, when he tried it, it opened into the courtyard.

And at the same moment he heard the sounds of fast approaching conversation. Two people talking in that corridor, just around the corner.

There was no place to hide. Except outside.

***

This part of the courtyard was a mess. It seemed there had been a lot newer, small building – or possibly buildings – made most of brick here once, and it or they had fallen almost completely apart with time so there were a few low walls and a whole lot of fallen masonry, some as piles including some more intact bricks and as a harsh gravel formed from the disintegrated bricks and occasional larger pieces, and as the the brick gravel which covered most of the ground between them.

Rahan ran to a slightly higher nearby wall and crouched behind it as the speakers got to the window holes and approached the door. He hoped they hadn’t heard his steps on the gravel. He had not been exactly noiseless.

But they, whoever they were, seemed to be too absorbed in their discussion to have noticed anything.

When they got closer Rahan started to make out some snatches of the discussion. Something about a ship coming.

Had they been honest to him after all, and were now talking about his ship?

He could hear their voices clearly when they passed one of the windows, but between them their conversation was just noise. Both speakers seemed to be men, and he thought he maybe recognized one of the voices as one of the men who had met them on the courtyard, the one who had seemed to be as much in charge as Lida was. What had been that name he had heard… Kerrin? The other was unknown, but they were speaking in Kinagt, which might mean he was also an offworlder.

Something about a…

The rebels meant to sell something? Something illegal and highly valuable.
To an offworld buyer. The probable offworlder mentioned something about… his boss? Who was going to land somewhere near here in their ship. The next word he heard well enough to be sure of it was ‘the jumper’, a word often used of ships which had the FTL drive.
Some sort of… container? Cold. Rahan was sure one of the used words was something about cold.
A cellar. In a cellar?
Here?
It kind of sounded like that. Something in a container of some sort stored in a cellar. Either a container which needed to stay cold, or a contained which needed to be kept in cold. Here, somewhere in this old fortress.

Then they were gone.

***

The sun beat on Rahan, making him uncomfortably hot underneath the makeshift poncho and most probably burning the exposed parts of his skin while he sat behind the wall and thought.

He had a bad feeling about that snatch of a conversation.

Now where would a cellar, or cellars, be in this place… Close to the kitchens, maybe? Or did ‘a cellar’ mean something like a dungeon rather than food storage…?

He looked at the buildings around him.

The original keeps or the newer ones?

Originals. They were much better build. If the rebels were using this cellar for storage it was probably in good enough shape that they didn’t worry it might collapse on top of them, or this valuable merchandise.

Would the entrance be inside, or outside?

He would not be able to figure this out while sitting here.

Rahan got up and peered at the keep he had been in. He’d just have to start looking. It perhaps raised the risk he’d be caught by them… well, he’d just play clueless and spin. Some pressing need had made him force the lock open, maybe he had gotten thirsty, or had needed to relieve himself – that might be a good one, nobody had provided him with a bucket this time, and anything left in a corner in a small room like that would have started to stink in no time in this weather – something, anything which would keep them thinking he was maybe still not suspecting anything. Spin, appear sincere and friendly and wounded, deeply wounded by the fact that they had locked him in, ask nicely not to be imprisoned again and who knew, maybe they wouldn’t – well, one could hope – or at least the might still stay less than completely vigilant and he’d still get a chance to run.

Try to make them believe he was stupid. Shouldn’t be that hard. He had walked right into this – whatever this was – like a lamb to a slaughter, hadn’t he? Just because the girl was pretty…

By now he was quite sure he’d better run. Maybe he still was not completely sure that the rebels were up to no good towards him, but he had enough doubts that taking the risk of trusting them any further seemed rather foolhardy. Trust your instincts. That’s what the Shemasharra he knew were always telling him. That if he thought the people he was dealing with were concealing something from him, he was probably right.

And now he had finally figured out one potential reason these people might have had for kidnapping him. A reason he very, very much hoped he was completely wrong about, because if he was right he was in the middle of a nightmare.

Now, realistically speaking it was a very unlikely potential reason. It was the stuff of sensations, a subject most only ever saw in over the top action, or sometimes weepy drama type of stories told in games or vids or novels, meant to entertain rather than to tell anything more than marginally related to reality. Something most people assumed was just a good, scary fairy tale.

The problem was that those stories were based on something that actually did exist. Perhaps not in the more civilized parts of space, and it was something rare even in the frontier, but still, something that did exist and was a big, lucrative business to a very small portion of human criminals.

And Tekmar was not exactly in the center of civilization.

So no matter how far fetched his guess might be, the problem this presented to him was that now he had to find that… container before he ran.

Find it and see what was in it.

I just wrote the last chapter, so the next job is editing. I will maybe wait a little, at least a few days, before I start going through the whole story again. Fresh eyes and all that. It might be best if I waited several weeks, but I really want to publish this now, not wait until spring, and it is getting dark here now, I don’t know how much longer I can concentrate well enough to be able to do this (SAD, bad version, for those of you who may be new here).

Now I don’t know how smart this is, it would perhaps be better to strive for the best possible product. On the other hand one of my problems is perfectionism, if I start thinking in terms of ‘perfect’, or even ‘best possible’, it might take me years to get even a single novel out. And volume matters in self publishing. It’s hard enough as it is to get any visibility in the crowded marketplace, whether that is just Amazon, or all the possible ones, and since I have nothing else but my stories – no noticeable blog following, no noticeable presence online anywhere else, no twitter account, no facebook one either (yet, but I’m planning to go there), and no damn money to pay for advertising – well, maybe it really would be smart just to try and get as many novels as possible out as fast as possible. Some will be better, some worse, but I think even uneven but voluminous output with some good novels in it, and some slightly less good, and maybe a few bad ones (so lets hope the percentages really will be those, more good than bad in them) might be better than few maybe slightly better ones coming out now and then, with very long quiet spells between them. Lets say I’m aiming towards becoming one of the go to names for people who want the book equivalent of something like McDonalds meals – no great culinary experiences, maybe, but cheap, fairly reliable and easy to find fare with which they pretty much know what they are getting. Well, not that I except to become anything as successful as that brand…

And if I want to get there, I guess becoming somebody who publishes new stuff in a fairly reliable schedule might be a rather big selling point. And volume. Having lots of novels for the buyer to choose from, and then, if they liked their first purchase they will be able to pick several others before they start to run out of things to read.

Chapter 6

They had ran for a while, then slowed down to a walk.

The streets were becoming quiet now. The sun had set, and streetlights were completely missing on several of the side streets, and sparsely spaced on the main thoroughfares which maybe explained part of the lack of people, nobody likes to stumble around in the dark, but Rahan suspected some of it was the area itself – he had thought the route to the restaurant had looked disreputable, but this was far worse.

Lida seemed to know where she was going. They had dodged into side alleys a couple of times when they had seen more official looking vehicles in the distance, and once hid in a small thicket of young trees growing on an abandoned lot, wrapped into each other and simulating the movements of an sexual act while a flyer had, for a few moments, lingered in the vicinity, but either it had not been looking for them or their playacting had convinced whoever had been manning the heat viewer that they were not the refugees but just some random couple overcome by their need for some instant nookie in the warm evening.

If he had not been so nervous it would have been quite pleasant. Even as it had been Rahan had needed to use some mind control methods he had been taught in order not to embarrass himself, or his partner.

He was fairly sure nothing like that was going to happen for real, not now. Which was a pity. But now one of his main concerns was getting out of this mess without totally compromising his chances of graduating.

Staying alive, unhurt and free, and making sure Lida did as well, were even higher on his list.

“We are close,” Lida said.

“The safe house you mentioned?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not going to ask anything until we are safely hidden. But I think I deserve some explanations after that.”

She gave him a sideways glance but didn’t answer anything.

What the hell had he gotten involved in? Lida was not just some innocent aspiring student looking for offworld information, she was involved in something shady right here on this planet.

Which of course might explain her need to get off it.

***

A ping from the AI told Ryn that the search was finished.

“What have you found?”

“Ytjar net. An alert for reinforcements near a restaurant called ‘The White Room’. The description of the male perp matches cadet Rahan Kendal.”

“Go on.”

“A female suspect was seen leaving the restaurant through a back door. Three agents went to talk to her – this seems to be some sort of euphemism, possibly meaning arrest, or at least roughing up – and she tried to flee. There was a fight, and the male suspect exited the restaurant, also through the back door, and attacked the agents.”

“And the Ytjar lost the fight?”

“Yes. The suspects are still on the loose.”

“Well well well… glad he has learned at least something.”

The AI didn’t comment.

“I’m going to play this by the book. Hide a message in the next bundle being send out through the main Startalk station. Both to the clan contacts and my immediate supervisor in the Corps.”

“Done. They will go out five days from now.”

Ryn growled. A lot could happen in five days. And nobody would get here until several days after that, if that. Depended on where the closest ships able to respond were right now, and how close they were to well funded Startalk stations. Ones which could afford to make contact often.

Not likely there would be any ships large enough to have their own station anywhere close. Startalk took nearly as much power as a ship jump. Mostly it made more sense to use ships because then you could transfer more than just information at the same time. Only the largest warships and most exclusive large transports had stations onboard.

And when it came to what he could do here, himself, Ryn knew he would not be able to do much outside the ship, at least not well. He stood out too much, looked like a Shemasharra too much, and the locals were, according to the data, actively hostile towards suspected non-humans. Or artificial humans, which seemed to be the preferred term on this planet.

“There is something else you need to know. I am not the only one infiltrating the Ytjar net. There are six or seven spies I am able to see in it. Also in the regular police net. Do you want me to trace them?”

“Figures. Separate sources or connected?”

“Some of the programs display similarities. Possibly three or four sources, but at least two of them are connected, either by having purchased the programs from the same source, or, if independently developed…”

“I get it. Trace them. Try not to let them notice you.”

“Yes sir.”

***

The house didn’t seem like something anybody would be living in. More like a warehouse with some office space.

“That door,” Lida said and pointed to one at the end of a short staircase leading down from the street level.

“Cellar? Nice.”

“We go in, but you will need to wait at the top of the stairs, right next to that door, until I have talked to the people down there.”

“Exactly what…”

“Not now. I will explain what I can later. But we don’t have the time now.”

Rahan sighed and nodded.

The wait was long. How long in real time he wasn’t quite sure since the only watch he used had been in the com, but way too long for his state of mind. But finally he heard her calling and started to descend.

The stairs were long and badly lighted. The lighting was even worse once he reached the low ceilinged room at the end of them. One filled to capacity with all kind of crates, some on the floor, some on shelving which turned the place into a maze.

“Lida?”

Rahan walked a little past several wooden crates piled on top of one another. There didn’t seem to be anybody here.

A sound from his left. He turned to look, only to be greeted by the sound and smell of some aerosol being sprayed on his face.

His last thought before he hit the floor was that Ryn was going to kill him for falling for such an easy trick.

I’ve been thinking about the name for the novel. It’s a fairly simple adventure story. Strongest Ties fits, but is damn generic and does not tell much of the genre.

So, maybe I’ll stop trying to be clever and go old school: Escape on Rudanos?

If I’m going to use the name of the planet on the name of the novel the original idea for that, Madalait, might not be a good idea. This is supposed to be an adventure. Madalait… well, it kinda sounds more like a group of older ladies who gather together to knit once a week, or something, not anything which might bring in mind action, and danger, and an exiting and dangerous planet to get into trouble on.

So, I’ll dig out my mythology books and start looking for names. Rudianos is some Celtic god, and right now I no longer even remember what he is god of, but it sounded kind of… maybe rugged? Only a bit too long. So, lets drop the i. Rudanos.

I’ll use Madalait for some other planet, probably. That’s from Australian aboriginal mythology. Generally speaking mythology names might be good fit for planets which have no indigenous populace so the human colonists can pick and choose whatever they want since mythology names are rather a tradition, well, not that unlikely that would hold for quite a long time into the future too.

Chapter 5

Lida was having second thoughts.

She liked the offworlder. During the last days Rahan had been a perfect gentleman, unlike too many of the men she knew, in or out of the movement, and she liked that. He seemed kind, and smart, and he seemed to be rather smitten with her, which made her feel even more rotten about the way they were planning to use him. And even though he had professed no obvious liking for his shipmate she was getting the impression he felt responsibility, as a shipmate – that no matter what his personal feelings might be he would defend the Shemasharra as a matter of course.

And Rahan did seem to like the Shemasharra, as a group.

Even if they were not humans.

But she had no idea what to do about her feelings of doubt. Maybe, if she could have hinted something to Rahan, made him worry about the Ytjar, or the police, and stay inside their ship the rest of their forced stay, until the ship was repaired and they could leave… only she could think of no safe way to do that.

Do it wrong and her own might figure out that she had done it, and that might force her out of the movement, and she didn’t want that to happen. The movement… so maybe what they did, sometimes, was not quite… right, but what other means could they employ? There were no legal methods which worked.

And what they were doing was important. So very, very important.

And her friends were getting impatient. She would not be able to stretch this much longer before they would act, with her consent or without it.

Rahan would be all right. He’d never figure what had been going on, and would leave the planet. The Corps would come and investigate, probably, but they would not know who to interrogate, she’d stay in hiding when they were here – easy enough for her, with her family, vacation on some off the official maps luxury resort perhaps – and since they would not be able to use their Shemasharra here it would be just humans anyway. And humans could be fooled.

***

The walk through the city was mostly uneventful, if you didn’t count the revelations it gave to Rahan about the world he was on.

The girl had been right, the area around the port was not representative, not truly. Here, away from it, the differences between the haves and have-nots of this world were stark. For a while they walked through an area with walled houses and clean streets, and the flyers and ground vehicles in sight were new and shiny, if more old-fashioned looking models, and the people they saw were rather well dressed, their tunics, trousers and long skirts in most cases made of similar fabrics as those of Lida’s, with colors which imitated those of the cheaper ones more commonly worn by the people he had seen in the tourist district, but of better quality otherwise.

According to Lida those were mostly servants.

And then there were the few nobles.

The fabrics they wore didn’t even pretend to be cheap. Luxurious, deep colors, often decorated with expertly done hand stitched embroidery and both pearls and semi-precious jewels sewn straight into the fabric. Soft leather, expensive looking furs, about the only thing he didn’t catch sight of was silk (and a quick check on his com confirmed that real silk, indeed, was not something produced here, nobody had yet imported silk worms, nor any of the systems to make silk without them).

Those people were very well groomed too.

But once they got past that walled area the streets got narrower and the houses shabbier. There were some apartment houses around, but most looked like they might house two to three families. Gardens were common, but all of them seemed to be filled with vegetables, in spite of lots of peering Rahan managed to spot just one narrow flower bed, squeezed between a row of cabbages and a path with what looked like old tiles in one garden they passed. That house was a bit neater than most of the surrounding ones too.

Paint didn’t seem to in use here much. White, occasionally, probably made of chalk and almost universally either flaking off, or visibly only as some small remnants in some slightly more sheltered pieces of a wall. Mostly the houses seemed to be made of yellowish or gray tiles. The windows had glass, but most of it was greenish and uneven, with bubbles here and there, and divided into small panes. Doors were wood, and mostly looked very sturdy.

To protect the occupants from criminals?

Highly likely. This kind of places rarely had low crime stats.

Rahan was feeling the lack of the familiar weight of the gun on his hip acutely by now. Carrying often made him feel slightly self-conscious, as if he was pretending to be something he wasn’t, but he could not deny the comfort having a gun gave him. After having trained with them more than half his life now he knew he was good enough with one to not doubt his ability to use it well, and wisely. It was just the image which occasionally made him prefer not to carry, at least not openly, maybe because he had spend his earliest seven years of life in a culture where nobody did, and where even the entertainment, at least one directed to children, did its best to paint them as something quite… stupid? As a result a gun sometimes still made him feel as if he was trying to draw attention to himself. As if he was pretending to be somebody he was not.

But in places like this he would have preferred to have one anyway.

On the other hand, he had also received plenty of training how to deal with all kinds of threats and dangers while completely unarmed. A gun was a tool, a tool one should have with him if at all possible, but it was not supposed to be a crutch without which one could not walk.

He had his brain, and his training, and his well maintained body. Under the circumstances those would have to suffice.

And besides, not completely safe was one thing – was there any place you could declare as completely safe, anywhere? But surely Lida would not have suggested their trip if there was some real, immediate danger to be found here? Not when the danger would be as much to her as to him… and she seemed competent enough, not the type who would blithely waltz into a bear’s den, thinking that she was one of the charmed ones and that nothing could ever happen to her just because she maybe had the theoretical right to be there…

So there were potential risks. But probably not high likelihood ones.

But he couldn’t quite get rid of the slight itch around the base of his neck, as if the hairs there were trying to stand up. No matter how much he kept telling himself he was just being stupid.

***

The restaurant didn’t look like much from the outside. Not really from the inside either, once they had walked past the opened double doors. A big, undecorated room with white walls – and no flaking, here, for which Rahan was grateful – mismatched tables and chairs, most ugly but serviceable, as was the tableware.

The food, however, really was quite good.

They ate several courses, starting with some sort of pureed vegetable soup and some small pastries, then the main course, fish, unmistakably some salmon variety for both, with vegetables and what probably were some sort of potatoes, ending with blueberry – maybe, at least the juice stained their teeth and lips the same way as the blueberries he was familiar with did – cake and the same coffee substitute Rahan had tried in the cafes next to the starport, only the one served here tasted a lot better.

Lida was unusually quiet the whole time.

“Is something wrong,” Rahan finally asked.

She startled, then gave him a small smile. “Not really. It’s just… some memories.”

“Unpleasant ones?”

“No, pleasant. I used to come here with a friend. But…”

“Boyfriend?”

“No, a girl I grew up with. She died, about two years ago. A flyer accident. I have been here after that too, I don’t really know why I started to think of her this time. Sorry.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

She shook her head. “No problem. Are you finished?”

Rahan nodded, feeling slightly troubled. There was still something a bit off in her manner. He just couldn’t quite put his finger to it. “Yes. Do you want to leave?”

Maybe it really was just some sad memories. But…

“I guess… I need to use the ladies room. This won’t take long.”

Rahan nodded and smiled again, got up when she did and sat back, trying to catch the eye of the waiter when she left.

His neck hairs were still itching.

***

Lida left through the back door, not sure what she was going to do. She needed to clear her head. And she needed to decide. Now.

Call her friends? She had been dithering long enough. She had not told him anything yet. She did not want to tell him anything. Deceiving him no longer seemed like something she could do. Maybe just let her friend take him by force… she’d still be deceiving him but at least she wouldn’t have to outright lie to his face.

Maybe she could just run. Leave this whole mess. Go home.

The decision was taken out of her hands when she saw the three men clustered close to one end of the alley she was in. She recognized one of them. She had seen him once, as a member of a raiding party she had managed to hide from when they had burst in to one of their warehouses when she had been there making an inventory.

Unfortunately they also seemed to recognize her.

***

Something seemed to be happening. Rahan had paid and had been twiddling his thumbs waiting for Lida to come back when he saw one of the waiters hurry from the corridor leading to the toilets – at least he assumed it did, since that was the one Lida had taken – and close the door behind him, then go and whisper something to the man who he had assumed was in charge of the place, from the manner he had been keeping an eye on the room while sitting and reading in one of the back booths.

Both of the men stole a sideways glance at him.

Time to go. He did not know what was happening, and figured he had no pressing need to wait here to find out. Discretion being the best part of valor, and knowing when to leave usually the best way to keep your freedom and your skin intact.

Besides, unless Lida had suddenly developed severe case of diarrhea she should have been back already.

Rahan got up and headed towards the now closed door, hoping it was not locked.

***

The corridor was a short one, and the toilets really were there. There was also a third, closed door. When Rahan opened it he found himself facing a narrow back alley.

There were noises of struggle coming from one end. When he stepped out to look he saw a bunch of people moving there.

The sun was setting, and the shadows were deep. It took him a moment before he could make out what was going on, but when the smallest of the four figures managed to land a good high kick on the jaw of one of the two men in front of her – the third was behind her, holding her arms – he figured he was looking at Lida and three assailants.

He didn’t stop to ponder what was going on. The girl was under an attack, and she needed help.

It didn’t take him more than a moment to reach them. One of the men turned to face him when they heard the sound of running feet coming towards them, a big wall of a brute who didn’t seem to be too much worried about the tall, slim and obviously very young man charging him.

That turned out to be a mistake. Rahan’s blow to his jaw landed him on his back on the dirty ground with no problems.

He had always liked things simple.

And he spent half of his time in high gravity environments, and did most of his training in them. The slimness was deceiving.

The man holding Lida threw her against the wall, where she crumbled down, stunned for the moment. The man she had kicked was still reeling, and Rahan didn’t think he’d have any major problems with the third man, but this time he had underestimated his opponent who turned out to be a lot more quick than most humans he had ever dealt with.

But still no even close to the Shemasharra he was used to sparring with. The man got in a couple of blows but Rahan sidestepped the third one, looking for an opening. They circled each other for a moment before his trained eye saw one, and he went in.

Only to receive a hard punch to his back.

The kicked man had recovered.

The punch itself didn’t bother him too much, but the fact that it dropped his com did.

Time to finish the fight.

***

Lida got up in time to see Rahan dispatch his two still standing opponents, one in front of him with a twofer to his solar plexus, the one behind him with a kick to his… sensitive spot.

She had thought he was bragging when he had mentioned he was a trained fighter. He didn’t look like one, or at least he didn’t fit her idea of one.

Seemed she had been wrong.

For a moment regret filled her. What she was about to do was not honorable. Especially not after this.

But the situation was out of her hands now. She needed to get to her friends, and he would not be able to get back to his ship – nor would he be quite safe there anymore, even if he reached it – after this.

There was nothing she could do now but stick to the original plan.

***

“We need to go.”

The girl’s voice was worried. Rahan checked the three men on the ground and saw they would not stay down long, then looked for his com and didn’t see it anywhere.

“I dropped my com. I need it.”

“I don’t see it. Can’t you access it without direct contact?”

“It has pretty long range, and it’s nearly indestructible, but I haven’t got the implants for it. So no.” He hadn’t liked the idea of something inside his skin – in his skull bones, actually – and had been dragging his feet about getting them for several years now.

Right now he was regretting his tardiness.

“So you can’t tell your ship…?”

“Not unless I find it.” Rahan said, starting to feel slightly panicky. He needed to contact Ryn. Now.

That was when he saw the grating of a rainwater drain right next to them. The slats were widely spaced, a com could have easily fit through them if it had hit them on the right angle.

Or exactly the wrong one.

In there? He knelt to look, but it was too dark down there to see anything.

“Rahan? We have to go. Now. Those men are coming to, but that’s not the main problem. They send an alarm, I saw one of them do it, and their reinforcements could be here any minute.

“And these are Ytjars. If they get hold of us we will probably just disappear.”

The near panic in Lida’s voice got Rahan up. He remembered reading about the Ytjar. Ending up in their hands would not be good. He knew he’d get people looking for him, but it would take days, maybe even weeks – depending how close either the closest Corps ship, or the closest Shemasharra clan ship was – before his reinforcements would get here.

Better not to get into that pickle.

Ryn would know what to do.

“Okay,” he said. “Which way should we run?”

***

The beeping of the alarm woke Ryn up from a nap.

Rahan’s com was no longer in direct contact with him.

The kid had not gotten the implants so he would not be able to communicate with the ship if he lost the com. On the other hand the fact that it was not close enough to sniff him no longer might not mean anything too bad – if one discounted the fact that if the kid had just taken it off his belt without at least leaving a short explanation as to why and when he’d put it back he was going to be getting one more negative mark on his record, and while his record was not too bad yet he had a couple too many on it already – so, perhaps he had only gotten into a heavy petting session with the girl and the com was right now sitting on the floor next to the couch or bed or whatever they might be on since it didn’t have to get more than a few yards away from him before it lost its ability to smell him.

He needed to take a look. If Rahan had taken it off himself he would have only himself to blame for the loss of privacy.

Ryn activated the sensors.

To be answered by the distant sounds of several echoing footsteps, and total darkness from the viewer.

High humidity levels. In fact the com seemed to be sitting in water, if not submerged.

The other diagnostics seemed to indicate something like an underground drainage system.

This was not good.

Ryn woke the ship AI and told it to hack into the police net. Both of them, including the one belonging to the Ytjar.