Deadly Ghosts, page 20
At that, Jesk acted as though he had been admonished, dropping his eyes and slouching his shoulders. “No, everything that I’ve done hasn’t been enough. In the time since I’ve asked for help, three more people have been taken. I tried to motivate the folks here, get them to band together and help. But so many of them are so discouraged, so tired and miserable that they can’t be bothered. At first, we all banded together but now, we just feel like the proverbial fish in a barrel, waiting for our time. Let’s be honest. You don’t end up at a refugee camp because everything in your life is going the way that you expected. You end up here because something has gone very much not as you expected… and then to have this happen… to be hunted, to have your children stolen right out from under your nose… it’s a tragedy compounded.”
The man looked as though he might cry, and Imogen walked over and took his hand, then smiled at him, saying, “We are here to help you.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us about the people who have been taken?” I asked.
Jesk sniffled and looked at Imogen as though the answers he sought might be written on her face. “That’s what’s so peculiar, other than their age, all being young, they aren’t united by anything else. Several different species have been taken and while a vast number of us came from the Glyncoar Mining Corporation, many of the people who find themselves here did not.
“And it isn’t any one group that’s being hunted. It seems as though whoever’s doing this doesn’t care who the people are or where they came from so long as they’re young.” When he said the last word, the tears finally came. Burying his face in his hands, the man wept softly.
He had given us much to go on, and I opened my mouth to ask where my aunt and cousin were, but before I could, a gunshot rang out from somewhere out on the street.
24
We took off running, with Jesk following close behind, wiping the tears as he did.
There was shouting, and people gathered in a circle. As he ran over, I saw a brawny woman with her knee on the back of a man wriggling on the ground beside a gun. A few people were tending to another man covered in blood, but even from afar, I could tell that he was dead.
“What happened here?” Jesk asked, his voice pleading.
The man on the ground looked up and shouted. “He cut me in the feeding line!”
“So you shot him?” Jesk said, the heartbreak he was feeling obvious in his tone.
Louise moved in close beside me. “This has nothing to do with us. We should keep looking around and see what else we can find out.”
But I didn’t hear her. At that moment, nothing else registered except for the two people standing down the street staring at me.
Without saying a word, I broke into a run, rushing in the direction of the two Kyrog.
“Hank!” Sharna shouted as I crashed against her, wrapping my arms as well as I could around her massive form. “It’s so good to see you. What are you doing here?”
Hearing those words and thinking about where I was meeting her, the guilt welled up inside me, wrapping around my heart like strangling vines.
I looked up at her and said the only words I was able to form. “I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, and I didn’t know how much she knew about Edgar. “Please, you and your friends should come back to my tent for some tea.”
“I’ll never turn down a spot of tea,” Louise said, and she turned to talk to Imogen, who was standing and staring at Edgar Junior, her face white as a ghost.
“Junior, this is your cousin, Hank,” Sharna introduced as we began walking.
He looked me over with all of his eyes. “He doesn’t look like my cousin.”
“Junior,” Sharna rebuked. “I’m so sorry.”
I chuckled. “It’s fine, and he’s right. I don’t.” I looked down at him. “I don’t look the same because your dad’s brother adopted me when I was a little boy. That means he took care of me even though I wasn’t his blood relative.”
“Does that mean you don’t have a mom?” he asked, and as he spoke, I could see the family resemblance: certain wrinkles in his gray skin, the way his mouth moved, it all reminded me of Lutch and Edgar.
I smiled softly at him and stole a glance over my shoulder to see Louise having to nearly push Imogen up the street and away from the unfolding tragedy that had started with something so small.
“I have a birth mom and dad, I just don’t know who either of them are, and because they couldn’t take care of me, your uncle raised me as his son,” I explained, trying to put it in as simple terms as I could. “So he became my dad.”
“But now your dad is dead like my dad?” Junior asked.
My steps faltered, and I almost tripped at the words. Sharna filled in for me, answering her son as she ushered us toward a tent much larger than the other ones around.
“Yes, his father passed away too, but you were much smaller then and probably don’t remember,” she said softly.
Entering the Consortium relief tent, it looked nearly identical to the previous one we had been in but scaled up by two times. The beds were much larger and reinforced with metal, and the desk in the back of the room had a large computer. Scattered around the floor were children’s toys that appeared to be a few generations old.
The blocks had worn down corners and were covered in doodles upon doodles like the layered graffiti we had seen on Parm. The small toy car had only two wheels and his toy soldier was missing her arm and head.
“Junior, why don’t you play for a minute,” Sharna said before walking over to a little table beside her bed where a heating pot sat ready. She activated it and turned to look at us. “Hank, do you plan on introducing us?”
“Oh, right,” I stammered. “Sharna Spears, this is Louise and Imogen Hush.”
The women smiled at one another, and I continued. “We are here to investigate what has been happening.”
I used the vaguest language possible in front of the young man. Though it was hard to think of him as being so young since he was already nearly the same height as me and a head taller than Imogen.
“We can talk openly,” she said, looking at her son playing with his toys on the floor. “Once he’s doing this, he’s lost to the world.”
“Do you know anything that could help us?” I asked, not entirely convinced that the kid wasn’t listening. “I understand that there isn’t much information to go on, but we want to help the people here.”
Sharna appraised me for a moment, looking me up and down in my new armor under my heavy scrapper’s jacket. “Hank,” she said. “Before we talk about why you’re here, can we talk about how you’re here.”
I looked at myself in my full bounty hunter regalia. “I suppose a few things have changed since last I saw you.”
“They certainly have.”
I cleared my throat and began to speak. “After Lutch died, I continued to run the business for as long as I could, but I got into some trouble and needed to get out of there quickly. My childhood friend is a bounty hunter and said that I might do well by myself if I switched professions, and, seeing no other choice, I did it. But I also do freelance work and try to help out wherever I can.”
I paused for a moment and considered what to say next. Her mate had died because the Inquisition was looking for me, and the person standing right beside me had been involved. It wasn’t even that she was complicit, she was right by his side when he burned the port to the ground. Or, to space, as it were.
Part of me felt like I owed her the truth, like I should tell her everything but another part of me knew that it was because I wanted to exorcise my own demons. Her life had been destroyed and knowing that it was because of us wouldn’t do anything to change that.
But I couldn’t stand here and not say anything. It was wrong and I knew it.
“Aunt Sharna,” I said, my voice rasping out as though my own body didn’t want to allow me to do what I was about to do. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“No there isn’t,” she said. “I know you went to see him and that whatever trouble you’re in must’ve followed you. But that doesn’t make it your fault. It’s the fault of the monsters who did it.”
Hearing that made me want to crumple to my knees and scream. I had been holding in so much guilt, and this would be the first step in healing. Her telling me the same thing that I was trying to convince Imogen of was exactly what I needed to hear.
“When he commed me to say that you had stopped by, it was one of the happiest calls we had shared in a while,” she said, her voice lifting as she spoke. “He told me that things were a bit complicated for you, but he didn’t care. He was just so happy to see you and talk about his brother one more time.”
“I felt the same way,” I told her. “At a terrible moment in my life, seeing him was like seeing an oasis in the desert.”
Sharna smiled softly and, despite the circumstances, it was nice to be back with family.
“Ms. Spears,” Imogen said in a warbly voice, stepping forward and then swallowing hard.
“Don’t let her,” Ned instructed in my earpiece, but it was too late.
The Kyrogi woman looked down at the little redhead, who said, “I was there when your partner was killed. I didn’t wield the weapon myself, but I was there.”
Sharna’s face grew dark, and it felt as if all of the air had been sucked from the room. Louise let out a sharp exhalation.
“What was your part?” Sharna demanded, taking a step toward Imogen.
The former Acolyte swallowed hard, her whole body shaking. “I was pressed into the service of the Inquisitor and forced to be his apprentice. I was there when he was killed. I’m so sorry.”
Imogen dropped to the ground and her aunt knelt to wrap an arm around her. My aunt stared down at them, looking as though she might stamp them underfoot as though they were ants.
Her face was pulled tight, her eyes were narrowed, and her muscles were taut under the government issued coveralls.
Her breaths shot out in ragged snorts like in the moment just prior to the Kyrogi brawl in the bank.
“I am sorry you were forced to be an Inquisitor, but I also don’t know you and don’t care to know you,” she snarled. Junior looked up to see his mother overcome with anger and cowered away. “You seek forgiveness, but you won’t find any here.”
Imogen stared up at her from the ground, the corners of her mouth pulled down into a deep frown. I wondered if she had wanted this. If, in the deep recesses of her heart, had wished for it.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered again.
“I’m sure you are,” Sharna said, all gentility of the moment before entirely evaporated. “You’re sorry now, but you weren’t sorry enough to act then.”
“Mom?” Junior said. “What’s going on?”
Sharna didn’t turn to her son, but her ear twitched and flicked in his direction. “Get out of my home,” she demanded, and Louise forced Imogen from the floor, then half carried and half dragged her out of the tent immediately.
“You travel in the company of a living demon,” she accused. “Your father would be ashamed of you.”
That one hurt.
“I understand you’re mad and you have every right to be,” I said. “But don’t presume to tell me how Lutch would feel. My father tried to see the best in people and gave them second chances. He gave me a second chance.”
“A second chance for stealing a soldering iron is one thing, forgiving someone who prowls this universe and ends the lives of hard-working, honest people for no good reason is not the same,” she shot back. “That thing that you brought here is a taint on the universe.”
I looked into my aunt’s face and was about to speak, when I stopped. I thought about the words and about Imogen.
“She agrees with you,” I said finally, and Sharna cocked her head.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Imogen hates herself for what she did, what she was forced to do,” I said, trying to explain the mind of this damaged thing that I now traveled with. “I don’t think that she said what she did to get absolution… I think she did it to be punished.”
“Knowing what John Gregory did to her, he undoubtedly trained some part of her mind to believe that she deserved punishment for anything she did,” Ned observed.
Of course, Sharna couldn’t hear his computer voice piped directly into my ear, and she seemed to be thinking about what I had said. The part of her that undoubtedly pitied the girl was warring with the part of her who loathed the former Acolyte for having any part in the death of her husband.
“What you say may be true, but people need to be held accountable for the things that they do,” Sharna said after a moment. “You say she was forced to do what she did, and I say there’s nothing in the universe strong enough to compel me to take that kind of action. You may think she didn’t have a choice, but she did. She could’ve wheeled around and tried to stop the Inquisitor. She could’ve fought back.”
I shook my head. “Then she would have been killed.”
“And she’d be in the ground instead of my mate,” Sharma said, the anger beginning to become infused with melancholy.
“No,” I said, my voice hard with assurance. “They would both just be dead. That would not do anybody any good. I know Kyrogi culture dictates that you fight but sometimes the best way to fight is just to survive. Imogen lasted long enough so that now she can help me put this universe right.”
“As a bounty hunter?” Sharna asked incredulously.
“I’m doing more than that,” I said, noticing that Junior was now still watching us. “There’s a reason that I was being hunted and I’m still being hunted. It’s because I’m doing something very important, but the forces out there are determined to stop me.”
“What’s that?” she asked, everything she had been feeling moments before still boiling just under the surface.
“I can’t tell you here and now,” I said. “But once the situation here is resolved, we will have a bigger conversation about everything that’s going on. Only if you want, though. It honestly might be better if you don’t.”
“It’s safe to assume that we are in as much danger just meeting as we are if I know the truth,” she said, and she wasn’t wrong. John Gregory would do to them what he had done to her mate whether or not she had any actual information on my whereabouts.
“Fair enough,” I said. “But you think you’d be able to help me find the kidnapper in the meantime?”
“I’ll help you,” she said, looking at the flap of the tent and then back at me. “And even though I know you’ll still be working with her, I don’t want to have to deal with your friend…”
“I wish things were different, but I understand,” I said, hearing the exhaustion of my own words. “This has been a constant struggle since I brought her aboard.”
“Then why did you?”
I looked at her front-facing eyes and said something that I had now come to believe was absolutely true. “It was the right thing to do.”
She stared at me unblinking for a long moment and seemed as though she was about to talk but Junior filled the void.
“If you’re adopted by a Kyrog, can you go back to the homeworld?”
The question was so incongruous with the mood that I couldn’t help but smile and lowered myself just a bit to his height while sitting. “No,” I answered. “The homeworld is a very special place, and even though I was taken in by a member of your species, that doesn’t mean I ever get to go.”
“Has a human ever gone?” he asked, scooting from where he was sitting on the floor to face me while his mom turned, pulled the steaming heater off the pad, and poured three mugs.
I didn’t know the answer, but Ned began to feed me information that I parroted to the young man. “In the time of the cosmic expansion of humans after the advent of the Tidal Drive, people spread in every direction, scanning every planet for habitability. This was primarily done by exploration bots, and when first contact was made, they would begin using the deep learning artificial intelligence on board to analyze the species and begin to interpret their language. If they had any.”
He continued to speak and I kept being Ned’s dummy.
“Information was collected back on earth and diplomatic teams were sent in their wake. These people would begin to attempt to understand the alien species and open lines of communication in hopes of future trade of either goods or information.
“This was true of our initial meeting with the Kyrog as well and while there is no evidence that the early diplomats were invited to the surface of the planet, they did parlay aboard some of the stations encircling the homeworld.”
When I finished speaking, I looked at the two Kyrog, who were staring at me blankly. Being interested in what Ned was explaining, I had simply repeated the exact words as he had spoken them, without realizing that I probably needed to make them a bit easier to understand for a young person.
“Lutch never told me that you were so well-versed in human history,” Sharna exclaimed. She took a sip of her tea and then handed me one of the mugs that, in my hands, was nearly the size of a bowl.
“They tried to teach us a lot at the orphanage,” I lied. Well, it wasn’t a lie. They did try. The lie was that I had retained any of it. “I guess some of it stuck.”
“See,” Sharna said, addressing her son. “This is why I always tell you it’s important to pay attention to your educators.”
Like every child in every corner of the universe, Junior rolled his eyes and went back to playing.”
I sat on one of the beds and sipped at the tea which tasted like a memory, immediately bringing me back to when Lutch would make it when another Kyrog would come to visit the shop. But I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Really, with some kidnapper who I believed to be part of the Disciples of Twain stealing children, I didn’t have time to focus on much else. All the random street shootings and personal conflicts would have to be set aside.
“So, what can you tell me about what’s been happening?”
