It had been a different taxi that took them to the surface of the new planet. Gareth had been awake this time, to follow the reverse process. Undock from the little egg carton, join the stream of vehicles splitting into five different groups, apparently to transfer to five cities down on the surface.
Morty had opaqued most of the the windows, but left one for Gareth to watch.
He felt like a golden retriever allowed in the car on a winter day, nose against the glass and tail wagging.
Into a cubical zone marked by eight satellites the size of small space stations. Park briefly. Flash of gold as they rode into a hole in space.
The tube was a short ride, compared to coming here from Earth, but that made sense. How many light centuries, compared to fractions of a light second?
The sky over Olehmmishqu was closer to the blue Gareth expected. Still a little too green, and there were two small moons visible on the horizon when he looked.
The ground looked like a city.
Well, no.
On earth, the cities were either really old and organic in shape, or more modern and square as a rule.
Olehmmishqu was built on a series of interconnected hexagons. Xiomber had produced a pocketcomm and let Gareth spend most of the trip reading about the Moisa. All he could think of to compare them to was a giant praying mantis, with four arms (two primary, two delicate), and six legs coming off of a very short abdomen, like a weird centaur or something.
They built hexagonally, in memory of the great nests they had established before being uplifted.
Gareth had a hard time imagining a flightless bumblebee, but that was sort of the niche they had filled on Ticcia and brought with them into the galaxy, like at Hurquar.
They apparently made fantastic architects. Gareth could see that, looking down at the various buildings, laid out like a map from above. The towers and such were every shape under the rainbow, and every color he’d ever considered. Or something like that.
This was all still a little weird, even for a Field Agent of the Sky Patrol.
But eventually, the taxi brought them to the roof of a mid-sized building, kinda sorta near the south(?) edge of town. It was cold up here. Gareth was glad he had the denim jacket, although he would need something heavier if they got into winter on some planet.
And a raincoat.
This was an advanced, galactic civilization. Couldn’t they do something about weather control?
The elevator wasn’t a box. It was a hollow tube. Morty stepped into air like a coyote accidentally running off a cliff chasing a road runner.
“Level forty-seven,” he said and then vanished.
“You next,” Xiomber prompted.
Gareth peeked over the edge of the hole to see a rapidly-receding Yuudixtl scientist.
Sure. Free-fall and trust the building to catch you. What happens if the power goes out?
Gareth gulped. He had an audience, and this was no time to ask for a stairwell. He gritted his teeth and stepped forward.
Something held his foot, but he didn’t dare look down to see what.
Just pretend you know what you’re doing.
“Level forty-seven,” he said, maybe a little louder than necessary.
He plummeted, but there was no feeling of wind. It was like he was in his own, little cocoon. Thirty-three stories raced by faster than he could count, and then he was magically standing on the deck, next to Morty.
The little lizard’s knowing grin broke the ice around Gareth’s soul.
“Fun?” Morty asked.
“Efficient,” Gareth countered, thinking back to the times he had to take a lot of stairs because there were too many people trying to use too few elevators.
When he got home, he was going to have to find a way to invent these elevators. Or hire a Moisa architect to rebuild The Arsenal.
Xiomber was there a moment later, grinning as well.
Huh. Yuudixtl didn’t really have lips like humans did. The grin was there in the eyes and the way the skin around them pulled tight and folded in. And the jaw dropped open just a shade.
Maybe he had spent enough time around the brothers to understand the non-verbal communication better. It had been two and a half days now.
Or maybe the magic PBJ sandwich was still modifying his brain. There was always that.
Morty suddenly walked forward, drawing the other two into his wake.
Gareth squinted at the writing on the door where they stopped, and suddenly the letters transformed into something he could read.
Biomimetics Heavy Southern Industries LLKR didn’t make any sense, though. Maybe a cultural thing?
Morty went in, so Gareth followed, through a boring reception area into a bigger space.
Now this was a mad scientist lab. Beakers, burners, racks of tubes arranged on black, heavy workbenches. It even smelled mad, with that cloying hint of ammonia he always associated with danger in a laboratory.
There was a Nari standing across one of the black-topped desks, writing on a white board with some sort of electronic pen. She was making adjustments to an animated image as he watched.
She turned, and locked eyes with Gareth. And smiled.
Gareth felt uncomfortable, like he was back at the teashop, but this one might not settle for just sniffing him.
“Heya, Talyarkinash,” Morty said, circling the tall desk.
The beautiful woman finally broke the stare and Gareth remembered to breathe. And start walking again.
Xiomber rolled his eyes when Gareth glanced down, but the little scientist kept quiet.
Hey, it wasn’t his fault.
“So what have you brought me this time, Morty?” Talyarkinash seemed to purr, glancing back in Gareth’s direction.
He stayed on this side of the big workbench, just in case.
She was just gorgeous, even if she was a bipedal lynx with upright ears and whiskers. Bright cobalt eyes complemented a resplendent pelt in what Gareth thought of as Imperial Blue. He had had a cat that silver-blue shade when he was young. He found himself clenching at the thought of this one also climbing into his lap and kneading.
She had that look in her eyes.
Yup, staying over here.
“Talyarkinash, this is Gareth Dankworth,” Morty introduced them, shaking her hand and then pointing.
Xiomber also got a polite shake.
Then she turned and stepped close enough to the workbench to hold out her hand.
Gareth took it gingerly, watching her nostrils flare and her eyes slit, just the tiniest amount.
“Already got a Nari girlfriend?” she asked.
Purred, maybe?
“Huh?” Gareth managed, losing himself in those deep eyes.
“Knock it off, Talyarkinash,” Morty chided her. “Random dame on the slidewalk literally handed him a scent card out of the blue yesterday. You still got it with you kid?”
“Huh?” Gareth managed to repeat. “Oh. Yeah.”
He pulled out his wallet and extracted the card, holding it up, but not out. It was his card and he was keeping it.
But he could smell the other woman’s perfume on it. Or her musk.
Uncomfortable here.
“So she doesn’t have a claim?” the cat woman asked silkily.
Claim?
“Uhm, not really?” Gareth supposed.
“Good,” Talyarkinash said. “So what can I do for you? Or to you?”
Gareth carefully stuck the card back in his wallet as an excuse to look down. He was sure his face had turned the color of his hidden uniform right now.
“So, you remember that project we hired you for, about five months ago?” Morty asked delicately.
“Sure,” the woman said. “You needed me to modify an alien. Brought me another one?”
Gareth did NOT like that gleam in her eyes when he looked up again. He held his breath and considered if he should just find a cop and try to explain everything, in spite of what the brothers had warned him would happen at that point.
He was not supposed to be a criminal. It went against everything Earth Force Sky Patrol stood for.
But he wasn’t a Field Agent here. No, this was time to be a Secret Agent.
Gareth held his calm. He hoped. The way her nostrils kept working suggested that she was studying him far closer than a casual acquaintance in a lab.
“Gareth is a human,” Xiomber said baldly.
That helped.
Talyarkinash stepped a whole pace back from her edge of the desk, and her ears rotated in different directions: one still pointed at Gareth, and the other now locking in on Morty.
Gareth felt better. Maybe she wasn’t about to make unusually-personal suggestions now.
“You brought one of them?” she snarled. “Here?”
“Another one,” Morty snapped back at the woman, reminding her.
She was twice Morty’s size, and really angry right now, but the two brothers almost looked like they were challenging her to say or do something stupid.
Who knew what a pair of Yuudixtl scientists could do against a Nari?
The woman retreated another step but otherwise held her ground. And her peace.
“Maximus is a human,” Morty continued. “Or was before you. I’m not sure quite what he is these days. You upgraded the physical to a Vanir. And Xiomber and I did the mental afterwards.”
“Bastards,” she hissed. “You brought a human into my lab? Do you want to get me shut down?”
“No,” Morty said. “I want your freaking help making Gareth here at least a match for Maximus, before that bastard takes over the whole criminal underworld, and then follows that up by taking over the entire Accord of Souls. You think that sort of thing’s going to help business?”
“You think a race war is going to help?” she snapped angrily. “Two them hunting each other through the planets? I might be shady, but I’m not going to be party to mass casualties of innocents, Morty. You can take your business elsewhere right now.”
“He’s a cop, Talyarkinash,” Xiomber added.
“And you brought a cop into my lab?” she growled. “What in the nine hells is wrong with you people?”
“It’s the only way to stop Maximus,” Morty said simply. “Nobody but a human has the necessary violent tendencies and lacks the psionic resonance of the Accord.”
“You’re a cop?” she sneered at him.
Gareth felt like she was sizing him up for a physical assault now, rather than an emotional one. But that was the sort of thing he could deal with.
Even if he had to let a woman hit him first. Hopefully, she wasn’t that strong.
It would probably still hurt.
“My name is Gareth St. John Dankworth,” he explained slowly, enunciating each syllable. “I am a Field Agent of the Earth Force Sky Patrol. Like Morty said, an officer of the law. Marc Sarzynski, the man you know as Maximus, is a renegade agent with a bounty on his head, back on Earth. And I will see him returned to Earth and brought to justice.”
“Back on Earth?” she scoffed, before turning to the two lizardmen. “You haven’t told him, have you?”
“Told me what?” Gareth felt his stomach go cold.
“No,” Morty said acidly. “We hadn’t. Not yet. That was supposed to come later, but I guess we’ll have to cover it now. Thank you, by the way.”
“I did owe you one, for bringing a cop in here.”
“Told me what?” Gareth focused on Morty and Xiomber now.
“No Earthman knows about the Accord of Souls, Gareth,” Morty explained. “Such knowledge is forbidden, because humans are the single most dangerous species known. But you’re here now, and you already know too much.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you can never return to Earth,” Xiomber said, possibly with a wistful trace.
Gareth felt his vision go gray. Something was wrong with his balance and both hands slammed heavily onto the top of workbench, catching his weight.
Never go home?
Never see his friends and crew again?
Never hold Philippa in his arms again? Unable to propose to her? Marry her? Start a happy life as man and woman?
For the briefest moment, rage threatened to overcome him. To make these two, these three, pay for what they had taken away from him forever.
Gareth sucked a breath deep into his soul and focused on the far wall.
The Nari woman had backed up another step, ears back and eyes showing white around the edges.
Gareth suspected he looked like all their worst nightmares brought to flesh before them. He certainly felt like it.
But Marc Sarzynski was here. Running loose in the wider galaxy. Who knew what terrible grief the universe would come to if that man wasn’t stopped.
And they had upgraded him, whatever that meant. These three people, he suspected, held all the guilt at such work.
What was it Xiomber had said? Only humans could be genetically engineered to go beyond the limits placed on everyone else by the Chaa?
Marc had always been a fantastic athlete back at Earth Forces Institute. He and Gareth frequently alternated first and second with everyone else vying for a distant third.
Academics had been the same way, with only three thousandths of a point finally separating them on graduation. It was one of the few times Gareth had actually been better, however thin that razor.
And then Deputy Agents with the Sky Patrol.
And Philippa.
She had chosen Gareth, and something had died in Marc Sarzynski. Turned him to darkness. Got him cast out of the Sky Patrol one short step ahead of his arrest.
And then he disappeared, until Gareth came that close to catching him in the process of breaking up a band of smugglers and slavers operating out of the UnderHives of Mars.
To apparently come here, to the Accord of Souls.
Gareth hoped it wasn’t all a fever dream leading his subconscious over the rainbow.
Another breath.
Gareth forced his fists to unclench, noting how nervous the two Yuudixtl were in addition to the Nari woman.
Yes, he was capable of devastating violence. They all were. It was part of what made humans what they were.
And why Earth Force needed the Sky Patrol.
“He’s here, and he must be stopped,” Gareth finally said heavily, eyeing each of them individually. “Whatever the cost.”
“Are you sure?” Xiomber asked. “We might could somehow try and erase a chunk of your memory instead, if we got lucky.”
“Whatever the cost,” Gareth repeated.