Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1) (3 page)

The com cut off the end of Irine’s snort. Reese sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose. The gentle rock of the hammock calmed her, reminded her of home, but her stomach still whined. Some part of her had hoped they’d never arrive at this Freedom-cursed world, but here they were. All she had to do now was find the Eldritch and pry him out of jail before anyone noticed her doing it. Then she could deposit him at some Alliance starbase and be done with the whole mess.

Reese rolled out of the hammock, the cocoon of felt blankets unraveling from her body as she raided her bathroom cabinet for chalk tablets, peppermint this time. She rifled through her closet for something unremarkable to wear while grinding up her breakfast. That she didn’t have any unremarkable clothes didn’t improve her mood. She pulled on a black bodysuit, long-sleeved and high-necked, a pair of soft black boots with flexible, quiet soles, and jerked on her utility vest with its bright blue ribs and orange piping.

She also tapped the intercom. “Irine?”

“Yes?” From the distracted purr, Reese decided it best not to ask what Irine was up to. The cats chose the oddest moments to get amorous, and as long as it wasn’t in Reese’s face she didn’t care.

“Is it cold down there?”

A pause. Then, “Moderately. Colder than the cargo bay but not as cold as engineering.”

Reese dragged a cloak off its hanger and slung it over her shoulders. With that, a belt with a sling for her data tablet, a handful of coins and a knife, she was ready. “Put us down outside Nurera, kitties.”

“Aye, captain.”

“Gentle as a cushion stuffed with feathers,” from Sascha.

“I’ll be up there in a minute,” Reese said. She made one last check of her cabin, then left for the bridge. Sascha was sitting at the pilot’s chair wearing the fur that his gods gave him and nothing else. Irine was leaning over his shoulder, eyes fixed on the view through the tiny windows.

“Oh for the love of earth,” Reese said, exasperated. “What have I said about piloting naked, Sascha?”

“Don’t break my concentration, ma’am,” Sascha said, his relaxed drawl at complete odds with his intent stare. “Driving this old crate in and out of a planet’s skies takes too much willpower.”

Having done it often enough herself, Reese couldn’t disagree. And Sascha was good—it was the reason she’d hired him. She’d grown tired of flying the
Earthrise
around herself. Still, she wondered what it was Irine whispered into his ear in their exotic language.

True to his word, their landing sent a bare quiver through Reese’s body.

“Good enough?” he asked her with a grin.

“Yeah,” Reese said. “Now get dressed.”

“Awww!”

Reese poked him in the shoulder. “I don’t want us to be noticeable. You nude is noticeable.”

“She’s got a point there,” Irine said, grinning.

Reese rolled her eyes. “Meet me at the airlock.” She leaned over and pressed the all-call. “Everyone to the airlock. We have a job to do.”

Fresh, warm air, redolent with spices and the scent of fecund soil and sun-warmed incense—Reese shuddered at the first whiff of Inu-case. She’d been born to recirculated air on Mars; from there she’d gone to the
Earthrise
. The freedom of the evening breeze struck her as unnatural and the varied smells alarming.

“And there’s where we’re headed,” Sascha said, pointing out the first of the buildings as they crested the hill.

“How far are we from the jail?” Reese said, choosing the moment to stop for breath. Inu-Case’s heavier gravity had sapped much of her energy on the ten-minute walk from the
Earthrise’s
position. They hadn’t wanted to land too close to town, just in case. Still, she envied Kis’eh’t, whom she’d left to guard the ship.

“Once we hit the buildings, we’ll be two blocks south of it,” Sascha said, studying his data tablet. The tip of his tiger-striped tail peeked from beneath his brown overcoat. “They didn’t want it too close to the center of town, I imagine.”

Irine squinted. “Looks pretty quiet down there. I guess we picked a good time to come by.”

“Let’s just hope someone’s there to take our credit and let him out,” Reese said. “Come on.”

Rising past the orange glow of the street lamps, the wooden houses had an ominous cast. What glimpses of the surrounding land Reese could catch between them revealed only a crimped plain drowned in violet shadows and the black smudges of distant mountains. The few trees dotting the lawns proved the source of the odor: their round, waxy leaves reeked so badly that the two felines took to skirting them, and even Bryer seemed to find them discomfiting.

In sunlight, perhaps the rustic building materials and open streets would have seemed inviting. Reese couldn’t shake the sense of unease that seeing them in the dark aroused. It didn’t help that there was no one outside. No children playing. No people walking home. No one talking, wandering the streets. Reese had never been to a slaver’s retreat, but she could only imagine it being this silent, as if everyone was afraid to call attention to herself.

“Doesn’t anyone live here?” Irine asked in a whisper.

Bryer glanced into one of the buildings. “Deserted.”

“Really well-maintained for someplace deserted,” Sascha said, tail lashing.

“I don’t like this at all,” Irine said. “It looks like a pirate hide-out.”

“Try not to look rushed, people,” Reese said. “If anyone’s watching, we have business here and we’re not worried about it.”

“Let’s just hope they can’t hear us talking,” Sascha muttered.

At the corner they stopped to allow a single sparrow zip past... a peculiar conveyance in a town, overpowered for mere hops across blocks and underpowered for any serious spaceflight. Reese watched it streak past and pressed a hand to her stomach.

“Angels! I can’t decide whether to be glad there are actually people living here or not,” Irine muttered.

“Never mind the people,” Sascha said, pointing at an unprepossessing one-story building. “That’s our stop.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Reese said, and marched to the door.

“How come there’s no gate? You know, with electrified wire or stunner fields or something?” Irine asked.

“I don’t know,” Reese said. She tried one of the doors—it was locked. “I guess all their guards are on the inside.” She scanned for a door announce and found none. “Are you sure this is the front?”

“I can check around the sides,” Sascha said.

“Do that,” Reese said. “Take Bryer with you.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And in the mean time we just stand here,” Irine said. “While security cameras stare at us.”

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Reese said.

“Right,” Irine said, tail whipping nervously. When it smacked Reese one too many times on the calf, Reese hissed, “Stop that.”

“Sorry.”

They waited. And waited.

“It can’t be that big a place, can it?” Irine said.

“No,” Reese said, feeling a headache beginning to knot her brows. “Something’s happened.”

“Should we go look?” Irine asked.

She wanted to say ‘no,’ so of course she said, “Yes.” And, “Keep close.” Then she set off around the perimeter of the jail. The nearest buildings were still set far enough away that they could see anyone coming. No gates or traps startled them.

“I can still smell him,” Irine said. She tapped on the wall. “But it stops right here.”

Reese glanced at the grass surrounding the featureless wall, then bent and examined it. Irine joined her a moment later. They stared together.

“See anything?”

“No,” Reese said.

Irine’s ears flipped back. “Would you know it if you saw something?”

“I haven’t exactly done much investigative policework in my life,” Reese said. She sighed and straightened. “Let’s go back around front.”

There were no other doors. No lights. Nothing. By the time they wound back up around to the forbidding doors, Reese was beginning to get angry. She pointed at the door. “Do something about that.”

For once, Irine did not protest innocence, but began scrutinizing the door frame and feeling along its edge. Reese watched her with growing impatience, but forced herself to remain still until the mysterious actions of the Harat-Shar bore fruit.

“Not bad. But not up to specs,” Irine commented as she pocketed her electronic picks and pushed the door in. It complained with a faint creak, then inched into the side-pocket. The girl peeked in through the crack. “Doesn’t seem to be manned,” she whispered.

Reese glanced behind her shoulder—still nothing. Not a person walking up the dusky streets, no sound of music or laughter or life, just the constant slough of the perfumed breeze. In front of her, a sealed door with no guards and not a breath of a living person, despite Sascha and Bryer having vanished without a clue. There were people here, people far more dangerous than she was.

“Maybe we should go,” Reese said.

“But my brother!” Irine whispered. “And Bryer!”

“We need reinforcements,” Reese said, tense.

“What, Kis’eh’t and Allacazam? Sure, they’ll help,” Irine said, scowling.

“I was thinking more like Fleet,” Reese said. “We’re not up to this, Irine.”

“Think what you want,” Irine said. “I’m not leaving Sascha in there.”

“Irine—!”

But the girl had already slipped inside. Reese lunged after her, trying to catch her tail, but Irine had ghosted past the empty front desk to the row of cells. No halo shield arced across the wall leading to them; no guards stood rigidly before them. Reese fought a renewed foreboding as she hurried after the Harat-Shar. The warmth of the stone floor communicated to her toes through the soft material of her boots.

“No sign of Sascha or Bryer,” Irine called back, “but at least here’s our expensive Eldritch!”

Reese sprinted after the girl, a cold sweat erupting on her brow. As she pushed Irine aside, her throat closed for a precious second at the sight of the body. Then, strangled, “That’s not him!” She flung herself around, preparing to flee—

And met the business end of a metal pipe. She didn’t even remember going down.

“Stand away from the door.”

Hirianthial judged that a joke, since he was currently wedged into a corner of the cell.

“You have guests,” the ruddy guard said. He leaned on the wall as his tow-haired fellow dropped two bodies onto the straw. Hirianthial watched them without lifting his face, and the fall of his pale hair masked his alarm at the boneless flop of the first and the slack feathered limbs of the second. Were they even alive?

“Don’t worry. They’ll be awake soon enough, and then you can spend the rest of your visit trying to avoid them,” the ruddy guard said with a grin.

The second guard withdrew and re-armed the halo field. They paused at the bars, waiting for some reaction from him as they had the first few times they’d surprised him with some ploy. By now they should have grown used to his stoic withdrawal. Hirianthial closed his eyes and waited for them to leave.

They didn’t. Instead they talked in low mutters. Blond smothered a chortle. No doubt Red was telling Blond the point of crowding one cell with all their prisoners when the cells lining the corridor remained empty. Red knew far too much about what made Eldritch uncomfortable, and after a few months of investigation Hirianthial had a good idea why. The Queen would not be pleased to have her theory proven. One needed only two hands to count the members of his race who’d ventured beyond their world... and only a few fingers to number those who’d returned. Liolesa had traced some of the missing to legitimate enterprises—there was a Galare studying psychology on one of the Alliance’s core worlds, for instance—but a good part of them had simply vanished without trace.

Hirianthial himself had been one of those sojourners when Liolesa enlisted his aid. He hadn’t wanted to help, but one did not refuse Liolesa, and not just because she was queen. He’d been drifting for several months anyway; the hospital on Tam-Ley had lost the funding for its xeno-critical care and been forced to contract those duties to a nearby emergency center, which hadn’t been hiring doctors who’d taken the Kelienne oath. He’d had a choice to take a different ethical oath every year since completing his schooling, but even if he’d been able to bring himself to do so nothing he’d seen in the wards had convinced him to change his mind. Jobless, he’d left Tam-Ley and taken up travel for its own sake, unwilling to return home, uncertain what to do next.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to help the queen. He was a passable spy. He was just a better doctor, and that by accident.

When Hirianthial could detect no more talk at the cell bars, he extended a feather of intent outward, searching for the mental presence of his guards: nothing.

Opening his eyes, he approached the two bodies. Both auras rested flat against their skins, gray and heavy as mercury. Hirianthial didn’t have to look hard to find the bruises and the discoloration of the palmer burn near their heads. He unlaced his sleeves and pushed them up his pale forearms before rolling the first body, the Harat-Shar, onto his side to look for any extended burns or swelling. Some people had adverse reactions to being struck with a palmer, and these two were too deeply unconscious for him to measure that without a visual inspection.