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(Starspeak)

I had only heard about Hurricane Katrina. Pictures came to mind too, but I was from California. It was a tragedy that we heard about, but not one we experienced for ourselves.

Standing on the flooded streets of Pudiligsto, I couldn’t help but feel that I still hadn’t experienced anything myself.

We were just visiting. In a few weeks, we’d be gone, all but certain to never return. But even with all the breakwater efforts, even with all the lives we’d saved, this city wouldn’t recover for years.

“[The difference is New Orleans had existing levees,]” Sid said. “[The water stuck around because portions of the city were already below sea level.]”

“[Like the Netherlands?]” I asked.

“[Not as much, but enough it was a big problem,]” Sid shrugged. “[Will that be the case here too?]”

“[I am not certain,]” Halax said.

I was trying my best not to let his surprisingly good English get to me. My best, in this case, was not very good.

“[Some portions of the city are no doubt in similar straits,]” the otter continued. “[Especially in the southwest. The further east and north you go, the faster recovery will take place.]”

For now though, every inch of the city within three miles of the beaches had at least a foot of standing water. Well, almost every inch. The spaceport and its massive reservoir were built into and atop a hill that lifted it above the flooding.

At least it was receding.

The reservoir and spaceport were secure, but it was still surrounded by flooding on three sides. So the three of us were stuck crossing flooded city to get anywhere.

We’d been told we could await a boat to take us through the streets, but given we were headed away from the ocean, it was faster for us to go our own way. When the mayor had contacted us this morning, their office had been acrid to the idea.

‘You might drown.’

‘You’ll get lost.’

‘Looters might find you.’

That last one was of particular interest to me. I pitied whatever rak thought ambushing us would end in success. Then again, if they did succeed, Nai would be after them next. So maybe I needed to pity those rak even more.

Halax had materialized a simple gondola, and I supplied the poles to push us along.

The most surprising thing to me was the lack of vehicles abandoned on the streets. They were sparse, and indicative that most of the people who evacuated had done so by other means than car.

Despite all the muddy water and blown over trees, the place looked rather tidy for a hurricane site. That only got better as we moved further east. Soon enough, the water was shallow enough to forgo Halax’s boat.

We knew we were finally in the right place when there was solid ground under our feet and we started walking truly uphill.

Our destination was in one of the oldest suburbs in the city. Old brick buildings, winding roads, and yard gardens. Besides the fact that Vorak bricks were mostly yellow and the plastic paneling shielding all the windows, the suburb felt unique for its lawns. Around each house was a perfect circle of trimmed grass, with everything beyond being mostly wild growth except for where the street heedlessly cut through. With no sidewalk, we walked in the street.

A handful of cars actually passed us, heading both directions trying to find the big roads to get out of town. One Vorak stuck their head out the window and stared at me and Sid, but we just gave a friendly wave and kept on walking.

The houses weren’t far enough apart to resemble rural America, but they weren’t close enough together to be picket-fences suburbia—further supported by the fact that the homes didn’t have fences between them.

…But they did have the thicker brush growth between them. The circular cut lawns functioned like a yard, with the knee-deep growth forming neutral ground between each property.

It was interesting to think about while we walked. How many of the houses had Vorak inside them? Who’d evacuated? Who’d stayed? And why?

My gut said this was probably a decently wealthy neighborhood. It would have been on Earth at least. The houses were simultaneously too old and too well kept to be anything less than middle class. Probably.

I didn’t know enough about local culture to know for sure.

And I didn’t want to ask Halax.

I wanted to talk more with Sid, but that would likely involve Halax in the conversation more than I was willing to humor, and he was definitely skilled enough to detect a psionic conversation—even if he couldn’t decrypt it.

It would be rude to have a conversation like that right in front of someone.

As soon as I realized how perfect that would be to snub Halax, another car rolled by. Only this one slowed.

“Are you Caleb Hane?” the Vorak inside asked Sid.

“He is,” Halax answered, pointing my way. “We’re en route to—”

“The gang-of-five, yes?” the Vorak inside asked. “Agent Avi is already there. They were asking about you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You want a ride? It’s not far, but wouldn’t it be rude not to offer?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” Sid said.

“Sure,” I agreed.

Halax relayed our agreement, and the rak nodded to the vehicle. “We’re full on seats, but you can hang on to the outside. There’s only another half-mile.”

I shrugged. Even without Adeptry, Sid could stand on the vehicle’s baseboards gripping tight to the car’s top rack.

The driver was considerate of us, taking the last half-mile slowly. We pulled up to a home like the rest: a yellow-brick one-story ranch in the middle of a cut circle of grass. More than a dozen vehicles had pulled in from the road though, having parked themselves in messy rows within the circular yard. The plastic window shields had also been pulled down. Through the curtains, there had to be twenty Vorak inside the house.

Five of the region’s most capable intelligence and law enforcement agencies all gathered in a lead agent’s sibling’s home. Why such a summit wasn’t just taking place in some related-but-subordinate office like a police station, I didn’t know. We’d definitely passed one or two outside the flooding zone that would have served.

But no, we were meeting in a house that apparently had kids present. Apparently there was home cooking available. That must have been a big draw.

Or maybe, since a hurricane had just freshly knocked the city on its ass, people weren’t being particular with formalities.

The rak who’d given us a ride dragged their feet getting out of the car, leaving us to approach first. We let Halax take the lead. He was our military liaison, after all. Sid and I’s presence was mostly perfunctory, just a visual cue that Halax wasn’t blowing smoke when he talked about the Flotilla or negotiated on our behalf.

Knocking on the door greeted us with some very startled Vorak parents as well as some wide-eyed Vorak pups peeking around the nearest corners. But Halax flashed a badge of some kind, and we were beckoned inside.

Good thing we grabbed our own breakfast before coming. Our hosts had put out an impressive spread of grilled fish sandwiches and savory fruits, but since it was home cooking, none of it was accompanied by nutritional index codes that might have cleared it safe for human consumption.

“[I’m almost tempted to risk it,]” Sid admitted. “[It smells good.]”

Looking at Halax’s face, he was keen too. Spaceship life forced you to appreciate good food when you could get it.

“[Oh, go help yourself,]” I sighed to him.

He frowned.

“[It’s not your permission I need,]” he said.

Despite that, I noticed he did not stay put, making his way over to the tables of food—where I could now see a simple sign that read ‘help yourself’ in Tarassin.

“[…I’m still going to mock your for gluttony,]” I warned.

“[You were going to mock me for something either way,]” Halax shrugged, returning with a small plate of sweet and smoky smells. “[And mockery is best taken on a full stomach.]”

“[He’s got your number Caleb,]” Sid warned with a smile.

“[Shut up,]” I grumbled. “[Or I’ll find our hosts and see if they need a babysitter for the pups.]”

Said children were peeking around corners just long enough for someone’s gaze to shift toward them, and they’d dart away, circling around to find a new angle to peer from.

Someone must have prepared the attendees of this meeting well, because only the original occupants of the house showed any surprise to human presence.

I heard a click from the nearest corner and caught sight of one of the Vorak kids ducking out of sight with a camera in hand.

“[Well I hope we looked good on camera,]” I chuckled.

Once everyone was inside and done…mingling, I guess, it was time for things to start properly. The whole meeting was in Tarassin, so I was mostly shit out of luck, but I followed the broad strokes.

This was simultaneously routine and critical. Immediately before and after every natural disaster in the region, law enforcement and intelligence outfits would put their heads together and identify changes in the landscape, figurative and otherwise.

Disaster areas could be security dead zones, and both criminals and hostile foreign powers were opportunistic enough to prey on the occasion. There would be aid and camaraderie too, of course. Nations would send aid and even criminal outfits would make convenient deals with the police, but everyone was looking for an edge.

Introductions were had, a few skeptical Vorak raised concerns at my and Sid’s presence, but there was one Vorak I recognized who vouched for us: Agent Avi.

They were the reason we were here, ultimately.

But before we sat down with them, the other rak had a very long and involved discussion about exactly what they were going to watch out for in the aftermath of this hurricane. Sid had to clarify some phrases I missed, but the discussion boiled down to two elements that posed the most risk.

Fringe terrorist groups from the far side of the Vastest Sea, and more local smuggling and piracy operations.

Even Sid didn’t have the cultural and socioeconomic background to understand the terrorism concerns, but the bottom line was that they were unlikely to be as problematic because they were far away and experiencing a storm season of their own.

Not totally out of the question, but worth much less attention in the meantime than the less high minded pirates.

The continent we stood on was a long and narrow one that stretched north-south—it also didn’t have one name, but rather dozens. So, funnily enough, it was most commonly referred to as that ‘Particular Continent’ in whatever language you were speaking. Its eastern coast—especially this near the equator—was some of the most inhospitable rancid swampland the planet had to offer.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

By comparison, the west coast was much more pristine, right down to the landmass itself. The east coast was dotted with islands and peninsulas that jutted far out into the Ourxcai Ocean, while the Vastest Sea enjoyed long gently curving coastlines along most of its length with almost no islands near the shore.

Almost.

A few hundred miles off the coast of Pudiligsto, there was a rather large archipelago that, in Halax’s own description, ‘did not consistently enjoy the presence of civilization’. The islands had once been a thriving nation, but they’d been bombed back to the stone age a couple centuries ago and never recovered.

Nowadays it was often the preferred hideout of honest-to-god sea pirates.

It was also right in the path of the hurricane that had just blown through.

Agent Avi was one of several Vorak that outlined the regional concern that hostile pirate bands would form in desperation after the storm’s damage, and would depart the islands to look for vulnerable targets to rob and loot in the nearby sea.

Pudiligsto was almost exactly the closest point on land, and it had a wealthy reputation. It was such a tempting target, in fact, that one Vorak agent nodded to me, mentioning a cargo ship that had likely been stolen under cover of the storm itself.

Sid elbowed me, not so subtly. Every eye in the room was looking at me.

“…Yes,” I confirmed. “I saw, but not much. Only lights.”

“Could you estimate their numbers?” Agent Avi asked.

“At least ten,” I said. “But I…”

I elbowed Sid back and fed him a line for him to translate.

“Apologies, but he saw the ship from a distance of miles,” Sid explained. “And his attention was more absorbed in rescuing survivors.”

“I didn’t see their boat,” I mentioned, clarifying for Sid what I meant.

“The pirates he did see must have reached the cargo ship with their own vessel, but it wasn’t visible.”

“But it must have survived the storm,” one Vorak noted. “At least long enough to deliver them to the cargo ship.”

The discussion went on like that. Different agencies trading information and ideas, making sure local police and outfits from the larger region were all on the same page vis-à-vis the criminal element.

Halax chimed in a few times with his own military knowledge too, but for the most part we Flotilla personnel were auxiliary to this part of the conversation.

It was almost noon before the group took a break from strategizing and Agent Avi made their way over to us.

“We won’t get a better opportunity to talk than now,” they said simply. “Shall we?”

We shall.

Our goal was the corpse, but we were stuck with almost sixty different delivery locations to check in person. Nothing guaranteed it would still be anywhere near where it was delivered, and getting any more specific leads would require the cooperation of…well, the Vorak in this room: law enforcement.

And if we needed help from the law, we needed to know exactly what it would cost us.

Negotiations were tough, but Agent Avi struck me increasingly as someone quite fair. They didn’t roll over and accept whatever we suggested. Far from it. But neither did they completely shut us down. Even when they outright refused certain points we would have particularly liked, they gave good explanations as to why—even though they didn’t need to offer any.

The deal Peudra had originally struck was extremely nebulous. At first glance, that was a bad thing. The Kraknor authorities could basically rescind our visas at any time just by making a demand we couldn’t honor.

But that cut both ways.

The Jack had a lot of leverage over exactly how much the Vorak could ask of us, just by being willing to walk away. Even better, Peudra had somehow set it up so that we could land on the planet while details were yet to be decided. So in the meantime, we could still benefit.

That freedom had turned out to be invaluable in the face of unexpected schedule interruptions like, oh I don’t know, say… a hurricane? Because even as foreign aliens with Coalition ties? The Vorak in the room couldn’t ignore what we’d done to help during the storm.

Even if they only heard rumors? Our negotiating position was even better than before.

We wouldn’t get a better chance to negotiate favorable specifics.

“Why is it just you, Agent Avi?” I asked. “With a delicate diplomatic situation like this one, there must be a lot of different claws on the scale here.”

“Just as you said, it’s a delicate situation,” Avi said. “One person’s touch is lighter than many. But you are correct. There are many interested parties contributing to my task force, but make no mistake, I am the one at its helm.”

I frowned.

Serral had coached me a lot on diplomacy and the social brinksmanship that went into deals at every level of government and bureaucracy. Sending the head of a task force to negotiate was strange when the only demand was to help out that same task force.

Maybe there was some reason Shuma Norshun was important enough to not bother hiding their negotiating aims.

“I’ll help you track down your fugitive,” I agreed, “but not without setting some hard limits. First, I’m not killing anyone for you. Second, I’m not following your orders. You can ask for things, but my crew and I need autonomy in the course of delivering you what you ask.”

“…Why is killing someone such a sticking point for you?” Avi asked.

I glanced at Sid.

He answered for me.

“Cops don’t have the best reputation in the country we’re from,” he said. “Excessive force, killing uncooperating detainees, [hell] killing cooperating ones too. There’s a lot of situations we’d sooner steer clear from entirely. You being able to hold us to your own use-of-force standards opens some unpleasant liability for us.”

If Avi was surprised to hear us talk about our own people that way, they didn’t show it.

“…I won’t act like I understand exactly what you mean about your home,,” Avi said carefully. “But I do believe I understand your concerns. Rest assured, we don’t intend to ask you or anyone of your crew to act in the field against Shuma.”

“But you’re keeping the option open,” I observed.

“As a last resort, yes. We still don’t know enough about their psionics, and if it comes down to needing your psionic support in the middle of an operation, I’d like to be able to ask for it.”

“I can agree to that,” I nodded. “But we have one big caveat. It’s nonnegotiable.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“This help I’m giving you? It needs to have an expiration date. I don’t want the Jack to finish all its other goals here and be stuck here as long as you still haven’t caught Shuma Norshun.”

“…What deadline are you anticipating?” Avi asked.

That was a difficult question to answer. The truth was, it depended on how much help Avi and their law enforcement connections were tracking down the corpses. The quicker we could resolve that, the smaller timeframe we would be on this planet.

“Six weeks,” I said. “Or however long it takes to track down our humans, whichever is longer.”

“…We can track down Shuma in six weeks,” they nodded. “If we have an agreement, I’d like to enlist your psionic skills immediately, however. I have pieces of Shuma’s work that were recovered from several of their crime scenes.”

Agent Avi handed me a plastic tackle box, each cell filled with dust and shrapnel. Most of it charred black, but a few paler chips of…oh, please don’t tell me that was bone…

I looked them in the eye.

“Debris?”

“They’re embedded with psionic cast off. We don’t have the skills to read anything from it, but you and your crew might.”

“…Okay,” I said. “I’ll start working on this today. In the meantime, do we have a deal?”

“Yes. We’ll add it to what we have in writing, but we won’t try to hold you or your crew here if we somehow can’t get within striking distance quickly enough.”

“I appreciate that,” I said. “Token of goodwill? Take these.”

Sid and I both offered several sets of psionic tools to the Vorak.

“I got a glimpse of what you were working with last time, and let’s just say I’m not surprised you couldn’t pick up much. Your tools are outdated, and you don’t need to be thinking about a buildplate outside of tactical scenarios. None of the buildplates are particularly well suited for investigative work—except maybe Suite? But that’s still a stretch.”

“I’ve talked to colleagues about upgrading our psionic tools, but many peers are reticent to part from the designs they’re familiar with,” Avi said.

“Control schemes are flexible,” Halax said. “They’ll get used to it because the upgraded tools are better. But even if they’re so attached, Caleb’s tools tend to be highly customizable themselves, so you should be able to adjust the new versions to feel just as good as the old.”

Avi nodded.

“That’s good. I’m glad you’re accessible to us. I don’t want to think about how we would investigate Shuma’s psionics without your expertise.”

“I know you have to stay sewn up about the classified details of Shuma’s killing spree, but if there’s anything more you can share, it might help. Knowing their mindset has a decent chance of letting us better understand their psionic methodology,” I pointed out.

“…I’ll give that some thought, but I can’t promise anything right now.”

“Classified information, I get it,” I nodded.

It looked like the rest of the group was beginning to draw back together—or conclude entirely, I couldn’t tell. But Vorak were moving back into the home’s front room.

One of them caught Agent Avi’s eye. It was the rak who’d been riding shotgun in the vehicle that stopped for us.

“…You mentioned police excessive force, and that you don’t want to be entangled in legal ramifications of law enforcement activity,” they said. “Do you also mean compliance standards?”

Sid and I both gave a quizzical look.

Avi looked to Halax for help. He explained.

“There are standards for what an agent of the law is supposed to do in response to danger,” he said. “Sometimes, if a danger is clear enough, the agent might be punished for not using lethal force. Avi is asking if that scenario is also one you intend to avoid.”

“I said I wouldn’t kill anyone for you,” I repeated.

“Yes. But given what you’ve said about hunting for your Human corpse, if you’re willing to assume some physical risk, and Agent Mashoj here can find a way to waive or assume your liability, you might have something to talk about helping each other out.”

Agent Mashoj slowed down and nodded. Avi showed them our list of corpse locations too. Their eyes alighted on one in particular.

“That’s on your board, right?”

“It’s my whole board, likely for the next week.”

“Not if they help.”

Avi nodded toward me.

“Just them?”

“Nah, they’re a diplomatic mission with a guard contingent with them. Doesn’t matter. Point is, they’re tough.”

Agent Mashoj had to mull it over, but even without knowing the details you could see them talk themselves into it.

“It would be tricky, but…” they trailed off, suddenly unsure if the words should go spoken aloud.

“But?”

“Well, you’re Ajengita, right? You’ve been with the Coalition navy,” they said. “You can fight.”

“Yeah?”

“Then…this location on your list: Cashtra On Cozum? You know what that is?” they asked me.

“Nope, but I know it’s in downtown Pudiligsto. Why?”

“It’s a mall,” they explained. “It’s totally flooded with the storm, but two gangs from different parts of town basically took it over to shelter there, and they’ve been getting violent trying to force each other out. I was investigating the gangs before the storm, but now it’s my job to apprehend them or clear them out, or something.”

“Let me guess,” Halax said. “Your exact orders were highly specific and precise?”

“Verbatim: ‘deal with them before the week is done’,” Mashoj nodded. “I have limited personnel and one tactical team, but that’s not nearly enough for the job. If you’re capable, I wouldn’t turn down the help.”

“I’m looking for a corpse that…well honestly, our info is vague too. It might have been there. Or it might have been delivered there. Or stored there. But if you can help us investigate, we can probably help you,” I said. “Do you have a problem with getting help from Coalition combatants?”

“Human, if it meant clearing this off my docket? I would buy all five Headliners dinner.”

I grinned.

“Funny you should mention them.”