Alien Skies, page 24
part #3 of Wakanreo Series
He was limping a little when he walked back to his office after that practice, and his side was sore, too. Schubert was very enthusiastic about throwing him, and he wasn’t as good as Joranchh had been at checking his blows. When he landed a hit, Kamuhi felt it.
When Kamuhi came through his office door, he was surprised to see that someone was sitting in his chair and using his terminal. As the man looked up, he saw that it was Jared and he came to attention.
“As you were, Ensign,” Jared said. “You’ve only got one other chair, so you’d better sit in it. I’m not getting up.”
He clicked the sign-off key and then watched as Kamuhi limped across the room.
“You look terrible, Ensign. What have they been doing to you here in Security?”
“Sergeant Quolund is helping me overcome a tendency to rely too much on my right hand, sir,” Kamuhi said, wincing as he sat down.
“So what does he do for that—beat you with a stick?”
“Not quite, sir. Before I start a practice fight, he ties my right hand so that I can’t use it.”
Jared shook his head. “Did you ever think of ordering him not to do that, Ensign?”
“Yes, sir, I think of it every time someone gets past my guard. But there’s not much point in putting someone in charge of something if you’re not going to let him really run it, is there, sir?”
Jared leaned back in Kamuhi’s chair. “You’ve learned a lot since you joined up.”
“Yes, sir. Did you want something, sir, or are you just checking up on me?”
Jared pressed the button on the desk that shut the door. He leaned back and put his feet on Kamuhi’s desk.
“Make yourself at home, Jared,” Kamuhi said.
“Mind your manners, or I’ll open the door and make you say ‘sir’ every third word again. How are you getting along?”
“Fine,” said Kamuhi. “I’m still worried about my Miloran social scientists in Yiangliun, but this is an interesting place to work. Yulayan likes being back in Wisuta, and Malia has made friends. Everything is fine.”
“Not quite, Kam,” said Jared. “I wish it were—I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but Inchauro Perduay escaped from custody today.”
Chapter Sixteen
“What?” Kamuhi uttered a Wakanrean expletive. “How? He was supposed to be securely locked up. What happened?”
“We had to turn him over to the Munis,” Jared said. “The charges filed against Perduay were filed under Wakanrean law. Since the kidnapping happened in Wisuta, we had to turn him and the other qatorglynai over to the municipal court.”
“How did he get out?”
“We suspect there was a qatorglynai sympathizer inside the lockup. Frankly, the Wisutan authorities seem relieved he got away. The idea of trying someone for kidnapping his own shahgunrahai didn’t appeal to them.”
Kamuhi had been thinking. “What about the attack on me? I’m ThreeCon—I’m as ThreeCon as you can get now, and I was in uniform, too.”
Jared shook his head. “We hadn’t pressed that as a ThreeCon charge, yet. For one thing, assault on a ThreeCon officer is only a ThreeCon offense in certain circumstances. I’m not sure we could make a case for you being on duty, or even on your way to go on duty—rescuing people isn’t part of a liaison officer’s job. Besides, if we had filed charges, we’d have had to explain a lot of things—like how we knew where Perduay was. We’ll go with that if we have to. And if we can get our hands on Perduay again, I won’t let go of him.”
“How about the other qatorglynai?”
“They’re still there. Hulerain Shugao, the woman who was the brains behind the plan, is charged with conspiracy as well as kidnapping. They may have to let the doctor go, but I don’t know that yet. The man Yulayan clawed is the easiest because he was actually involved in the snatch, and we have witnesses to that.”
Kamuhi stood up and tried to pace. He was limping too much to do it very quickly, so he gave up and sat down again. “Damn it, Jared! How can Yulayan ever be safe if the Wakanreans won’t keep Perduay in custody? This is twice they’ve let him go!”
“I’m not happy about it, either. If you recall, the last time he was locked up, it was for trying to kill me.”
“What about the transponder? Can’t we track him again?”
Jared shook his head. “Someone got wise to that. The first thing we did was check for that signal. We picked it up right away, but when we tracked it down, we found the transponder itself on the floor of a commercial ground transport on its way to Jitsin. Someone must have figured out we had marked Perduay, and removed it.”
Kamuhi cursed again, this time in Miloran. “So we have no idea where he is?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Jared admitted. “This means you and Yulayan have to be careful, Kam. I’m not going to confine you to base—not yet anyway—but be sensible, kid. Don’t leave unless you have to, and don’t let Yulayan go anywhere without you or someone else with her.”
Kamuhi nodded. “We’ll be careful.”
“See that you are,” Jared said, getting up from Kamuhi’s chair. “I really am getting too old for this daring rescue business,” he added from the doorway. “And besides that, we can’t count on it working every time.”
Kamuhi called Yulayan and told her the news. She was upset at the thought that Inchauro could be lying in wait for her to leave the base.
“Don’t leave for a while then, guisha,” Kamuhi said. “Do you have to go out for anything? Pretty much everything you need is on base.”
“I know.” Yulayan sighed. “It’s just it’s a little scary to know he’s out there, and it’s annoying to feel trapped like this.”
“Do you want to leave Wakanreo and take Malia with you? I can’t go anywhere until I get new orders. I could ask for a transfer, and you could go back to Terra and wait.”
“For how long?” Yulayan shook her head resolutely. “No, Kam. We’re not going anywhere without you, and I don’t think ThreeCon is going to send you anywhere else soon. They had a whole galaxy to choose from and they sent you right back here.”
Kamuhi smiled. “You may be right, sweetheart.”
“Are you still going to be late tonight?”
“I don’t have to be. I wanted to finish writing some computer code so I could run a job on the system when it’s not busy, but it can wait. Do you need me to be on time?”
“No, no. Malia and I are going to go visit her new friend, the little Shuratanian girl two doors down. Her mother invited us for dinner. Her father is on your Security staff. He’s a corporal.”
“That must be Joranchh’s family. He told me he lives near me.”
“Well, he’s on duty this evening, so his wife invited us over. Malia is really looking forward to it.”
“Go ahead and go, then. I’ll run my program and get myself something to eat when I get home.”
After they signed off, Kamuhi went back to work. He had to go over the duty roster with Sergeant Quolund first, and then he wanted to finish his program.
He went down the hall to the sergeant’s office. The Miloran was sitting at his terminal tinkering with the week’s duty roster and training schedule.
“Come in, sir,” he said. “I’ve just finished.”
Kamuhi couldn’t find anything wrong with either schedule. When he said so, the sergeant pressed a key to post them officially. It would appear on the electronic board in the hall, and everyone would get individual notice of their shifts.
Quolund frowned when Kamuhi limped toward the door. “Schubert needs to learn better control, sir. Maybe I should try you with someone else?”
Kamuhi paused and looked back at the Miloran. “Don’t do that, Sergeant. I wouldn’t want Schubert to get a swelled head. He’s not bad, but he’s not that good, either.”
“Maybe you’re right, sir,” Quolund said.
Kamuhi went back to his own terminal. As a way to learn about the systems, he had begun investigating the computer programs that made them work. Like most code, these programs had been written by computers, and Kamuhi always liked to check on anything that was done without human intervention. The perimeter defense system seemed to Kamuhi to have an inherent weakness, and he was trying to find a way to test it. He paid no attention to the time but sat absorbed in the computer code. When he finally had it ready to start, he looked at his wrist com and was surprised to see it was later than he had thought.
Kamuhi hit some keys to initiate running the test program at specified times, sat up straighter, and stretched. There was the sound of a step in the hallway and he looked up to see Master Sergeant Quolund in the doorway.
“Working late tonight, sir?” the sergeant asked.
“A little bit late, Sergeant,” Kamuhi admitted. “You, too?”
“Yes, sir. Are you going straight home?”
Kamuhi stood up. “I was. Have you got a better idea?”
“Care to stop by Suzie’s for a drink?”
Suzie’s was a bar on the base, a favorite place for off-duty relaxing by the Security staff. Suzie was short for Suzanuchh shu Straahn; the Shuratanian liked having Security staff in his bar, and he always made them feel welcome, and even let them run a tab when needed.
Kamuhi considered. Yulayan probably wouldn’t be home yet, and she was expecting him to be late anyway. “Sure thing, Sergeant. I’ll get my jacket.”
Kamuhi and Sergeant Quolund walked along in companionable silence. Suzie’s was crowded, but they found an empty table in one corner. Clearly, Quolund had the habit common to Security staff of always sitting with his back to a wall. A corner was even better.
Kamuhi ordered Shuratanian ale. Quolund asked for Miloran whiskey. Kamuhi watched him drink it.
Quolund noticed his interest. “Ever try Miloran whiskey, sir?”
“Yes,” Kamuhi said. “I did all right with it until Lieutenant Guhlhan gave me a drink of the real thing. After that, I decided to leave it alone. And it seems foolish for you to be calling me ‘sir’ while we’re sitting here having a drink. Why don’t you drop it when we’re off duty? My friends call me Kam.”
“All right,” the Miloran agreed. “My full name is Quolund anth markh but my friends call me Quolund. It’s hard to make a nickname out of Miloran names.”
Kamuhi grinned. “I agree. As your full name means One Who Considers Carefully Before Acting, shortening it to One Who Considers Carefully works fine, but that’s where it stops. Lieutenant Prouhdhum was the only Miloran I ever met who had his name shortened into a nickname, and it always bothered me that it made no sense that way.”
Quolund chuckled. “Names are funny things. I have a hard time with Shuratanian names sometimes.”
“I agree they can be hard to pronounce sometimes,” Kamuhi said, “but they’re more like Terran names in that if the name has meaning, it has usually been lost. They don’t use their clan names the same way we use our surnames, though. Captain Drushachh isn’t Captain shu Wahl, for example.”
“Have you been on Shuratan, Kam?” Quolund asked. He was almost finished with his glass of whiskey.
“I was there for a few years. It’s a fascinating place. Shuratanians live so much longer than the rest of us, they tend to really take the long view of things. Nothing gets done on Shuratan unless it’s debated for two or three years, at the very least, just to consider all the possibilities.”
“How about Milora?”
“Nope. Never been there. I had planned to visit if I could get in shape for the gravity, but I lost the chance to have a say in where I went when I enlisted.”
“Were you on Shuratan as a civilian?”
Kamuhi nodded and took a sip of his ale. “I worked for ThreeCon as a civilian for ten years before I signed up.”
The Miloran looked at him curiously. “How long have you been in uniform?”
“About two years.”
Quolund shook his head. “I’m not good at guessing Terrans’ ages, but I would have said you were too young to have been working for twelve years.”
Kamuhi grinned at the comment. “I’m old enough to appreciate your saying that. I started as a civilian when I was eighteen. I signed the oath when I was twenty-eight, but I didn’t actually have to go in until almost a year later, after my daughter was born.”
“What did you do as a civilian?”
“I was a physicist.”
Quolund put his empty glass down in surprise. “Muhk ’ta ah?”
Kamuhi shook his head. “It’s true, Quolund. I’m not trying to fool you. I was a physicist for ThreeCon for ten years before I enlisted.”
Quolund signaled the bartender for another drink. “Why did you enlist, then? It sounds like you had a good job. You probably already got the benefits of travelling, if that’s what you wanted from ThreeCon. As you pointed out, you had a hell of a lot more say over where you went when you had a contract.”
Kamuhi pondered. “Everyone always asks me that question. I suppose it was a combination of things. In a way, I was bored. I wanted to do something more challenging—at least to me. I wanted to feel that I was contributing instead of just consuming. Anyway, once someone put the idea in my head, it just seemed like the right choice.”
A servoid rolled up with Quolund’s drink. The Miloran picked it up and took a healthy sip.
“Well, anyway,” he said, “Prakech can stop worrying. You learned the systems so fast, she was sure you were sent to replace her or make her unnecessary in some way. I’ll tell her you’re just an overqualified ensign.”
Kamuhi smiled. “Is that why you asked me to have a drink, Quolund? You wanted to sound me out for Prakech?”
The Miloran shook his head. “No, I wanted to find out what happened today.”
It was Kamuhi’s turn to look surprised. “What? Did something happen?”
“I think so,” Quolund said. “First the Commander came to your office. He didn’t send for you, he came to see you. Then, a little while later you came to my office to go over the roster, and you looked worried about something.”
Kamuhi was impressed. “Do you know everything that goes on in the Security Office?”
Quolund shrugged. “Not everything. But we track the Commander pretty closely. And when he shows up in someone’s room, we notice it. Especially when he sits there and waits for twenty minutes instead of just leaving a message for you to report to him when you get back.”
“I’ll have to warn him about that,” Kamuhi said. He drained the last of his ale and set the glass down. Quolund ordered another one before Kamuhi could protest.
“The Commander’s a friend of yours?” Quolund said. It was half statement and half question.
“I guess he is,” Kamuhi said. “It sort of snuck up on me. He’s very good friends with Yulayan’s father. I thought of him that way at first, and then I realized he had become my friend, too.”
“He’s a good officer. He’s been here a while, and he knows all the people on base. We all feel that we know him, too.” He took another sip of his whiskey. “An officer can be friends with someone under him so long as he’s fair. Everyone knows the Commander’s fair.”
Kamuhi nodded agreement. “I’ve never known him not to be fair.”
The Miloran persisted. “So you don’t want to tell me what he told you?”
Kamuhi laughed reluctantly and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll find out anyway. Perduay escaped today.”
“Perduay?”
“One of the two men who attacked me at the hospital.”
“How did he get out?”
“The Commander suspects that there was a qatorglynai sympathizer among the Munis who had him locked up.”
“Why did they attack you, Kam? The team said they went right for you.”
Kamuhi sat back in his seat and stared down at his ale. “I don’t know about the other one, but Perduay hates me because he’s Yulayan’s shahgunrahai.”
Quolund swore in his own language. “I thought you said she ended the mating?”
“You can end it for yourself, but you can’t undo it for the other person. Yulayan has the implant, but Perduay doesn’t. He wants her back—or at least he thinks he does. I suspect the qatorglynai may be using him.”
“Did you know who he was when he attacked you?” Quolund asked.
Kamuhi nodded. “I recognized him right away. I could never forget him.”
Quolund put down his glass. “Did you know your wife when she met him—when they mated?”
“Yes. We were already married, and I was there when it happened.”
Quolund swore again. “Man, what a thing to have to see!”
Kamuhi didn’t say anything but he took a good, long drink of ale.
Apparently, Quolund decided to change the subject. “How do you like sparring with Shuratanians? I think you said you’d never fought one before you came here?”
“I don’t know. I still haven’t really sparred with one. You won’t let me use both hands.”
This made the Miloran laugh. “You learned to handle Joranchh with just one hand. You would never have done that if I had let you use both of them.”
“How long do you plan to keep it up?” Kamuhi asked. “Assuming Schubert doesn’t actually kill me, I mean.”
“Until you can defend yourself against me with just your left hand.”
“That could take months.”
Quolund shook his head. “You’re good—you’ve got speed and natural ability; you’ve got the reach because of your height. You just need someone to give you the discipline.”
“Discipline won’t do me much good in the infirmary.”
