Eveth was beginning to develop a deep and abiding antipathy towards Olehmmishqu. It was still a beautiful place, well ordered and filled with wonderfully-grand buildings and park. They were close to the river today, running down a tip that had turned out to be a miscommunication about a Moisa hairdresser. Or an old enemy with an axe to grind.
Because right now it was the people of this town that were driving her a little crazy.
Since the local police had put out a full description of the Nari scientist, Dr. Liamssen, she and Grodray had been overwhelmed with tips and leads, all of them leading to dead ends.
Grodray had made a few calls, and the Constabulary had dropped a number of officers into place around the fringes of the investigation as help, but kept things exceptionally quiet, otherwise. According to her partner, she was getting as much rope as she wanted to buy, until she decided to throw in the towel on this one.
The city was reasonably well locked down, but there were still over three million sentient creatures to watch coming and going. Any Nari, Vanir, or Yuudixtl in an auto-taxi or taking a ferry got a second look, to make sure it wasn’t one of their four quarry making a run for it. All that had happened so far was that a number of innocent civilians were being inconvenienced for reasons nobody would explain.
Most of the officers involved couldn’t anyway.
Worse, the words of that dumb punk kept coming back to haunt her.
A camera on the back of a smoke shop had caught enough audio to be cleaned up and useful. The man had known about the human. And worked for someone called Maximus, which was a new name circulating, one connected with some sort of crime ring thought to operating out of Zathus.
And the human had a name now. Gareth.
But she was under observation by those same criminals. Her, personally.
Someone on the inside was feeding the thugs her itinerary. Had been for several days. Possibly, any clues that might be good ones were being filtered out by corrupt members of the local police.
Who could she trust, besides Grodray?
This Gareth fellow had tried to suggest to the crooked doctor that they were on the same side.
A human? Please. Got a sued spaceship you want to sell me?
“Let’s lunch,” Eveth offered as they walked out of the latest office and back onto the main street.
The river itself was two blocks over, just past a long park fronted by a variety of interesting restaurants with sidewalk dining. But she wanted an inside table today.
Grodray raised an eyebrow, but nodded and gestured for her to lead.
She found a Borren-homeworld-style café, heavy on fish in cream sauces, that had the layout she wanted. Asked for and received a booth clear at the back, as far from the restrooms as possible. Got far enough away from anyone that nobody would ever have a need to get close enough to eavesdrop.
Had even flashed her badge quietly when asking to be seated away from everyone.
It was as much privacy as she could get on short notice.
“What’s up, Baker?” her partner asked as they got their orders taken.
Food wouldn’t be long, as they were on the early end of lunch and had the place almost completely to themselves.
“I’m not sure our communications or our investigation are secured,” she said simply.
“The information we’re getting makes no sense unless someone is filtering things before they get to me. Normally, we would have several decent leads, none of which was critical, but all pointing in the same rough direction. We’ve gotten nothing here.”
“I agree,” he nodded. “Asked a few friends to look into some things without sharing with the locals.”
“You think the local Constabulary is bent?” she pursued.
“No,” he replied. “The police probably are, given how much underworld activity we seem to keep finding. They should have kept the place cleaner if they were doing their jobs. My gut says that we have a couple of bad apples inside our organization.”
“You never listen to your gut, Grodray,” she snapped.
He actually smiled at that. A twinkle came into his eyes that she had rarely seen before.
“Let’s hope they believe that as much as you do, Eve,” he grinned. “A reputation is a powerful thing, especially if you can lead folks astray with it. So, what do we do to shake things up?”
“I want to rattle some cages,” Eveth replied. “Liamssen disappeared, which suggests that she planned ahead, and had help. We need to find who might have helped her set up her escape plans. What have we got that we could offer a low-level punk to roll on someone?”
“If we could trust the prosecutors on this planet, I would say we could offer some punks sentencing bargains for information,” he noted. “But I don’t know which ones are the safe ones. I can promise you that a couple of forensic accountants will be making unannounced visits in the near future.”
“What do they do?” Eveth asked, lost at the term. Forensics and Accounting seemed miles apart.
“They follow money around,” Grodray smiled. “How it comes in, when it comes out, where it goes, how it comes back. Most criminals aren’t smart enough to hide their tracks well enough from those sorts of Prime Investigators.”
Prime Investigators. The true free agents. Had her partner called in some favors from old friends at that level? Was it that necessary? Were things that bad?
Eveth wondered if the Accord of Souls was closer to tottering than she had ever suspected. She had always thought that crime was just a little worse than it used to be. Maybe she needed to go back generations and compare? Was that something a Prime Investigator might do?
“Okay, so we can find corrupt politicians and the people holding their puppet strings,” Eveth said. “But that’s still going to take months. I have a feeling we have days at most. Liamssen is a geneticist. That suggests they plan to recast their human so he can hide. What do we know about human genetics?”
Or rather, what did you know that you haven’t been able to tell me before, but which might be utterly critical right now, Jackeith?
She saw Grodray do a lot of processing quickly, from the way his eyes shifted back and forth on some invisible horizon.
Finally, those internal voices reached some consensus.
“This is Level-7 stuff, Eve,” he began slowly. She nodded with the gravity of that pronouncement. “Humans are not part of the Accord of Souls. Were never modified by our ancestors, the Chaa. They look like smaller versions of the Vanir, Those Left Behind, but that’s just convergent evolution, we think.”
“Okay,” she said, holding her breath.
“Most geneticists can work with basic things,” he continued, pausing to glance over his shoulder to make sure they were along. “Fix problems at birth. Alter hair or skin or feather color. That sort of thing. Non-threatening to galactic order.”
“What about the humans, Grodray?”
“There might not be any limitations on them, Eve,” he said quietly. “They might be a blank slate onto which a geneticist with a lot of skill and no scruples might be able to paint.”
“So those killers…”
“Might be turned into one of us easy enough,” Grodray nodded. “Vanir are the closest match, if you want to hide. Plus you add size and mass to an already dangerous species. Look at what that human was able to do to you in his native form. Now make him my size with those muscles.”
“Would she stop there?” Eveth asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Would a criminal geneticist just stop at making him Vanir, Grodray?” Eveth asked. “If there are no limits, would she go crazy? Most doctors have some level of god-complex, trying to either make the world a better place, or prove that they are smarter than everyone else. What might she do?”
Again he turned to look out of the booth. Nobody was anywhere close.
“Six months ago, we had suspicions that Cinnra, on Zathus, was trying to get himself a human killer,” Grodray said. “Not long after that, about two months ago, Cinnra was dead and there was a new boss. One nobody had heard of before. A renegade Vanir, according the very little we’ve been able to piece together.”
“A modified human?” she gasped.
Grodray shrugged meaningfully.
“And somebody in the gang went and got themselves a cop, to try and stop this Maximus?” Eveth leapt into the darkness. “But they’ll need to upgrade him to a Vanir as well. Will they stop?”
“That’s why we’re functionally acting like Prime Investigators on this, Eve,” her partner said, deadly serious. “Go wherever the crime takes us, without being Prime Investigators, because that might attract attention.”
“Are you really just a Senior Constable, Jackeith Grodray?” she asked, making another intuitive leap.
Another grin. But not a no. Or a yes.
“Then we’re back to the top,” she said. “I don’t think we have time to do anything but kick over an anthill and see what happens. If Maximus is really a disguised human, and Gareth is about to become a Vanir, we’re potentially facing a war among literal gods, right here on our beat. You need to find me a door I can kick in.”
His eyes got a faraway look to them, like he was checking files for the right address. Someone that wasn’t normally worth rousting, or maybe a criminal he knew about, because those were easier to keep track of.
Instead of answering, he pulled out his pocketcomm and dialed.
“Yeah, me,” he said to whoever answered.
Pause.
“I want a name,” Grodray said. “Someone at mid-level that is wired in enough to give me the information I want when my crazy partner has him dangling out a window by one ankle.”
Longer pause. Probably some hemming and hawing at the other end. Like maybe she already had that sort of reputation on Orgoth Vortai and someone might know that.
She had never actually let go. But it made a fantastic threat, when a woman who was bigger than you could hold you by one leg, upside down, over a thirty-foot-drop.
“And remember, you’re the one signing this check,” Grodray added his own threat when he got an answer.
If whoever it was wasn’t on the level, Jackeith Grodray might be coming for them next. With an angry partner in tow.
Food arrived as he hung up, so he sat silently, but she could see that twinkle in his eyes again.
When they were alone, and he checked, the man smiled like a shark spying a wounded seal.
“I might have someone for you, Eve,” he said.
Good.
She had to stop two gods from destroying the Accord of Souls. And she absolutely had to do it tonight.