Painting Paths
(Starspeak)
“Meeting in an aquarium?” Agent Avi asked. “You certainly keep me guessing.”
“I came in on a sailboat last night,” I mused. “My crew said the same thing.”
“A sailboat? In this weather? There are easier ways to kill yourself, you know.”
“I wasn’t by myself,” I defended. “I’m not unconvinced my company wasn’t pulling some stupidly skilled Adeptry to help us along. The waves were odd, but I don’t know about stuff like that.”
“…And you thought you might learn something about that at an aquarium?”
“No, I thought I might learn what the [hell] a fake human corpse was doing here.”
I leaned back, giving Avi a better view of my fellow abductees talking to half a dozen aquarium personnel.
Avi blinked at me, trying to figure out if I was serious, no doubt.
“What have you got for me though? Kinda felt like it was a bit quiet from your end; keep in mind, if our deadline comes and goes, you can forget about my help with Shuma. We’re not sticking around here just for that to get held over our heads,” I warned.
“Suck some more air,” Avi defended, “we just got hit by a once-a-century hurricane. Progress stalled.”
“But now you have something for me to look at,” I surmised.
Avi handed me a simple clamshell pocket case.
Popping it open revealed a dozen or so shards of scorched metal nestled into foam slots. Touching each one confirmed there were psionics embedded in each one.
It was pretty easy to see that the psionics were related to each other. Each piece’s contents fit not-so-neatly with at least two other shards of metal. This…had originally been one piece of metal. So had the psionics.
“What, did Shuma set off a bomb?” I asked.
“Yes, when they first went on the run,” Avi said. “Since Shuma keeps not showing up where we think they will, we’re having to go further back in our investigation and challenge the earliest assumptions we made. We actually didn’t know the debris had any psionics until last week.”
“Couldn’t detect them?”
“Nope,” Avi said. “Too fine. Too faint. Some of us are actually worried we might have destroyed embedded constructs in other debris just by feeling around for them too indelicately.”
“You might have,” I said honestly. “This was delicate work even before the original solid shattered.”
“Does the physical structure matter that much?” Avi asked. “I understood it was ‘the mind’s touch’ that was more important.”
“Physical structure of the object can still matter,” I said. “If you want to see for yourself, embed some psionics into ice, and then watch what happens as it melts. That said, the physical structure doesn’t really matter in this case. It’s just that the psionics are broken between the shards, so you have to us your ‘mind’s touch’ just to get them all back in once piece…speaking of pieces, you’re missing several here.”
“Can extrapolate what the missing information might—”
“Already did,” I said. “It’s something geometric. Two-dimensional.”
“Can you show me?”
I pulled out my handbook and flicked on a very fun holographic display option. Ordinary eyes would see nothing at all, but if you were equipped with the right psionics, you could see and interact with the images.
Jagged geometric shapes spun into the space above the handbook, and I flipped it around a few times.
“No, back. With the narrow part pointing down,” Avi suggested.
What was it? Ah.
“It’s a map,” I said. “That bit even looks familiar. Wouldn’t Coast City be right there?”
I pointed to a spot on the coast, and Avi nodded.
“If the pieces were a map…” I said, turning my attention back to the shards. “Then there might be more.”
Scraps that I’d assumed were junk or damaged fit together more sensibly when I compared them to the regional map Peudra had provided us.
Another polygon aligned into shape, and I added it to the first piece.
“It’s a map of the Ogi Coast,” Avi confirmed. “That makes sense. For Shuma to have evaded us effectively so far, there must have been planning. Those two spots. They’re marked. Flagged?”
Two cities were marked on the map, one to the northeast, inland quite a ways. The southern one much closer to the water, but not truly on the coast.
“Looks like it,” I said. “Both of those have expanded files in the map: city layouts, roads and aqueducts.”
“Escape planning,” Avi said. “We know Shuma was able to prepare multiple safehouses, but we’ve only found one of them. They could be hiding out in either of those cities.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
Avi blinked.
“Yes. Shuma went through a great deal of trouble to destroy this evidence, and we’ve finally managed to tease some secretes from the cleft.”
“That’s precisely why these leads are probably false,” I said. “Shuma put a lot of work into something they’d be incentivized to keep from you. Moreover, it would have been trivially easy to make sure your task force never saw it.”
“How’s that?”
I wiggled the clamshell of metal shards.
“They embedded the constructs in real metal. If they’d been inside exotic solids instead, the psionics would vanish completely when the solids dematerialize,” I explained. “The only reason I can think of for them to put in that much work ‘destroying’ the psionics is to put on a show. I’ll bet you all the money in my pocket Shuma’s not at either of the places marked on the map.”
“…Put like that, you’re probably right,” Avi realized. “It’s actually the worst case scenario then.”
“Because something like this is designed to waste your time, but you’re obligated to follow even false leads just in case they somehow pan out?”
“Yes. We know it’s probably a waste, but we have to waste the time anyway,” they growled bitterly.
“Exactly how much politics is there around Shuma?” I asked.
“More than I realized when we first met. How familiar are you with Kraknor planetary governance?”
“Just the broad strokes,” I said. “Nations are sovereign for the most part, but only through the atmosphere. Authority ends where hard vacuum starts. Then there’s the planetary authorities who preside over space travel and trade.”
“Horribly oversimplifying the ‘planetary authority’ but it’s close enough. Point is, some heads of state are throwing their weight around because they think Shuma embarrassed them personally.”
“Heads?” I asked. “More than one?”
“Don’t ask,” they scowled. “Point is, Shuma isn’t the only psionic-capable fugitive eluding authorities right now, and the planetary officials are considering asking Void Fleet personnel for help learning how to handle psionics.”
“The Red Sails have had psionics the longest, and they’re close with humans in C2,” I said. “Their psionics expertise is probably the best in Vorak space.”
“Except for you,” Avi pointed out.
Ah.
“That’s how you and Peudra managed to swing a deal like this,” I realized. “Your proposal one-upped someone else’s in terms of psionic expertise.”
“Something like that. Level with me then. We know Shuma’s in the Ogi region—can’t say exactly how we know, that’s classified. But we know. So, gut instinct. Where would you look for them?”
“Well I don’t exactly know much about their personality or thinking,” I said. “That’s where I would start. But, if they’re as pragmatic and efficient in their evasion as they were with the murders…”
I spun the map around, adding western stretches of water to it, tripling the size of the depicted area.
“I’d look here or here first,” I said.
Two patches of ocean were highlighted on the map.
Merchant Navy Fleet: Benihar.
Sovereign Mariner Fleet: Soo.
Rather than looking surprised though, Avi sulked.
“Tsk. I wish you’d said anywhere else.”
“It makes sense,” I said. “This planet has more ocean than Earth, and a quarter of the planet’s population lives amphibiously. You’re the only planet that has sovereign nations that holds more territory in ship deck square footage than land. Searching those fleets for one individual would be nearly impossible just on the numbers. Plus the diplomatic tangles, and Peudra says boats and merologies are constantly turning over their crew and personnel. So Shuma wouldn’t stand out as a new face.”
“I know all the reasons,” Avi said. “I just think it’s too obvious a place to look. And moreover, it goes against Shuma’s pattern. They like having escape routes. And while they would almost certainly never be found in those fleets, on the off chance they were? There’d be nowhere to run.”
“…I get what you mean about escape,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t want to hide there either. But that’s because I’d hate to be in hiding all on my own like that. It would be especially hard to know when people were coming for me, even if it just meant having one or two friends who I could call and keep me informed.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“I’m sure Shuma would accept any ally that offered, but who’d actually throw in with them knowingly? No, half of what makes them so impressive is just how evasive they’ve been all on their own.”
I checked the map again and tried puzzling out the distance in my head. If the two marked cities were supposed to be wild goose chases, they would need to appear genuine beyond just skin deep.
If the deception was discovered too easily, it wouldn’t be worth the time it took to prepare.
And it would have had to take at least a few days to travel between both places. From what Avi had told me about the timeline, the manhunt started just a day or two after the killings. Meaning these maps were likely prepared before the killings.
“Shuma didn’t actually enact their plan before they built themselves an elaborate exit strategy,” I caught up. “I see what you mean about their pattern.”
“One of my colleagues on the task force is ready and eager to begin the process of checking those fleets. It’ll take months.”
“I’ll be long gone,” I warned.
“I know. That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to go after the fleets, but I think my contemporary knows that. Someone I trust suggested they might be trying to prolong the investigation so there’s more glory at the end.”
“Playing politics?”
“Non-stop.”
“I was just on a cult’s island yesterday,” I chuckled. “They played some silly power games there too.”
“Really—wait, Stiragu?” Avi asked. “How am I not surprised. You know, a place out of the way like that...you know that wouldn’t actually be a bad spot for Shuma to hide out. I don’t suppose you saw someone that might be Shuma?”
“How would I know?” I asked. “I still don’t have their picture.”
Avi’s scowl deepened at that.
“Don’t remind me. If nothing else, I’ll be in contact again in the next few days with a physical description. We’re trying to track down some of their old coworkers, but the hurricane has made contacting people difficult. And the descriptions we are receiving vary too widely. We think Shuma might have been using Adeptry to disguise themselves gradually over time.”
“Wow. That is a lot of minutiae to set up in advance. Hey, if you needed any more proof the killings were premeditated…” I said.
“We knew that as soon as we found out what the first victim did—” Avi said, biting their tongue before they could spill any sensitive secrets.
“You said there was some kind of military experiment?” I asked. “How bad was it?”
“Bad,” Avi said darkly. “Bad, by any meaning of the word, on every planet. I’m sure you can use your imagination.”
I could.
“Not exactly making it sound like you want to catch them,” I admitted. The more I heard about the driving forces behind it all, the more I felt the same way.”
“Are you kidding? At this point half the reason I want to catch them so badly is because of how damn competent they are. The planning for just the escape alone makes me want to swoon. If I can catch them, I want to leverage them with a sentencing agreement where they help us…well, basically do what you’re doing. Hunt fugitives that have learned psionics quicker than we have.”
“They killed twelve people,” I frowned.
“They killed ten high ranking government and espionage officials who all killed dozens of civilians in their tenure and didn’t seem to lose much sleep over it. It’s a matter of perspective, but in my book, Shuma’s only really guilty of two real murders: spouses of their first two targets,” Avi said.
“I’ll just go ahead and loop back to the part where it doesn’t sound like you’re that motivated to catch them,” I said.
“I am,” they assured. “Two murders are still murders. Not that I care if you believe my commitment…”
“Not what I mean,” I said. “Would you say you’re the most committed to catching Shuma sooner rather than later on the task force?”
“Maybe not the most, but I’d be near the top of the list, yes.”
“I’m just saying, Shuma’s evaded multiple governments and planetary authorities for months with barely a sighting of them. Maybe they’re just a super talented and intelligent rak…or maybe they’ve got an edge.”
Avi stilled.
Governments and spies always loved to be on the cutting edge of information. A task force like Avi’s would come with some of the most experienced rak alive when it came to compartmentalizing information and keeping confidentiality. But a lot of that expertise would be settled in methods and technology rendered obsolete by psionics.
“That is a dangerous accusation to level,” they warned. Their tone had shifted, and I couldn’t tell if the agent was irate or offended.
I sent a stealthy probe at Avi’s firewall to see if I could nab some transceiver logs or call history.
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “Point is? Shuma’s been too successful; they’ve got help. Somewhere.”
“I will bear that in mind. The task force will send you more updates this evening. Expect a physical description of Shuma within the next three days,” they said briskly. Almost an order.
“You got it,” I nodded.
Avi departed politely, trudging deeper into the aquarium’s exhibits. They were heading the wrong way for an exit. I almost spoke up.
But I flipped through my handbook and rang Peudra instead.
Peudra didn’t hesitate. Peudra pointed out. Some of Peudra’s ruffles smoothed out, but they wouldn’t forget my manners for a few hours. <…So you’re that busy?> I asked. Hah. That was a tight little bit of diplomatic wizardry. I was a pretty poor ambassador of Earth, but I had read up on certain pro forma issues like setting foot on foreign soil, invading embassies. That sort of thing. The planetary authority was a bit like the UN back on Earth, with more teeth behind it, but simultaneously less too. It wasn’t unique either. Most planets had something like it. Planets with biospheres and rich resources like that especially enjoyed the diplomatic stability a planetary authority/union/operation provided. It was a problem if that authority tried to meddle in how a nation ran itself—every nation hated that. No citizen anywhere liked the idea of external powers meddling in their home, town, city, nation, planet, specifically in that order. But given how tactically advantageous space could be, you wanted your diplomatic body capable of enforcing the trade laws through space. They worked with cargo unions, deep space mining ops, all of it. So the balance was usually national sovereignty ended with the planet’s atmosphere, the planetary or system authority handled the hard vacuum and how it all moved around. Nations handled things on the ground, planetary authorities—extraplanetary authorities handled things in space. The major exception was spaceports. Pudiligsto had a spaceport, it operated the spaceport, but it didn’t truly own the spaceport. It was more of a joint venture between the nation and the planetary authority, for bureaucratic and diplomatic purposes. In the same way that you didn’t technically walk on a nation’s soil until you cleared customs, you didn’t technically walk on Kraknor until you left the spaceport. Peudra had found a way to hold a once-in-a-lifetime summit for the fate of the cosmos on Kraknor…without key people involved ever ‘setting foot’ on Kraknor. It abused petty loopholes in the highest and most egregious fashion. I couldn’t be more on board. No sooner had I cut the connection and pocketed my handbook than Tasser called me over. “He’s done. Caleb! We got it.” “Yeah? Catch me up.” Sid, Jordan, and Tasser were gathered around an exposed exhibit with no lid. Vorak could peer at some of the creatures in the shallows and even touch them. Johnny had traded with Sid for overseeing the youngsters, and he was corralling munchkins between exhibits. “So we found our corpse locked up in cold storage,” Sid explained. “But this aquarium has an Org office attached—it’s tiny, only two techs.” “It’s a cubby,” Tasser added. “The Org likes to send techs to aquariums, zoos, schools, basically anywhere they can get people interested in biology and ecology.” “Anyway, point is, the techs found the body and we got to see it yesterday.” “And it’s still here?” I asked. “We were going to transfer it to the Jack today,” Sid defended. “We had to get a refrigerated casket first, but then you said it was fake.” “So why are half the munchkins here?” I asked, casting my mind toward the exhibits and the humans moving through them. “It’s an aquarium,” Jordan said simply. “They wanted to come.” “Can I assume you at least didn’t tell them you were all here to pick up a body?” “Oh but you, fearless leader, missed a key detail,” Sid said. “We aren’t just here to pick up a body. The brains here think they know how the fake corpses were made.” “The Org folks showed us a demo yesterday,” Jordan said. “You know those bones we found in the coffin?” “Yeah, were they real or fake?” “Both,” Jordan said, a smile even twitching on her lips. “They were real bone made out of real organic matter, but they were grown with Adept methods.” “…Explain.” This time it was her turn to use the handbook’s hologram function. “So Mashoj and Mavriste were right: the bones were definitely counterfeited using extremely rare and advanced biotech. Specifically, the same kind of stuff Knox used to shapeshift their skeleton.” “Osteoclasts and osteoblasts,” I nodded. “I remember. Except Knox created cells that replaced more than just his bones.” “Same thing here,” Jordan confirmed. “Look, you can create a mold with an Adept-made object, then dissolve it, right? But what if you dissolved it slowly?” “Like over the course of a few weeks?” Tasser added. Parallel to Jordan’s explanation, a rudimentary animation played out on her hologram. A cartoon Vorak skull dropped into a vat of molten rubber that cooled, and Jordan manipulated the view to show a cross section of the animation. Inside the solidified rubber, a tiny corner of the skull dissolved back into nothing, and a shunt was introduced, squeezing…bioengineered Vorak osteoblasts and the nutrient supply they’d need to start producing bone. Speeding up the animation, the new bone grew into the tiny gap in the mold, but more of the Adept-made skull dematerialized. Bit by bit, the bone grew to replace the exotic skull, and after a few weeks, the originally fake skull had been replaced with a virtually indistinguishable real copy, made from real matter and with real Vorak DNA. “What we found on the container ship was a proof of concept, interrupted halfway through,” Jordan explained, rewinding the animation. The new skull was only half-formed, and what was left of the original vanished, leaving behind the distinct crystalline-cuboid growth structure. Only it wasn’t actually a growth structure, was it? It was the opposite. It was the dematerialization pattern. “So you get a fake skull made of the real thing,” I followed. “But you don’t have to do it with Vorak cells, do you?” “Nope,” Jordan said. “You do it in stages.” The animation changed, this time showing not just an animated skull, but a full human skeleton. Submerged into a mold, the process repeated. Shunts were added to the mold, and the skeleton was dematerialized bit by bit to guide the growth. But once you were left with a skeleton, you didn’t stop there. New body parts were materialized onto the skeleton, tendons and ligaments for later muscles. Sink it into a new mold, and repeat. Dematerialize those new parts, guide the new growth, layer by layer, a fake human body was created. It was like 3-D printing with meat. “[Good grief,]” I muttered. “At a certain point, wouldn’t it have been simpler to just clone a real human body?” “Cloning is pretty strictly regulated by the Org,” Tasser said. “And you might have quite some trouble cloning a human if you only have a dead one.” “Still, even if we think of this as a budget setup specifically for counterfeiting…it would still be horribly expensive. You can’t just have one type of cell, feed it, and have it grow into the mold. You have to have the exact right type of cell to grow into the exact right body part you’re layering. Even assuming they cut corners and grew similar body parts using the same type of cells, [hell] even assuming you grew all the organs from the same kind of cell, we’re still talking about a huge cost just to make one corpse.” …Except that tracked. The cult had paid through the nose for their corpse, so whoever was making the corpses was attaching huge price tags to them. Luxury items. But they weren’t good enough fakes to hold up to real scientific scrutiny. I’d figured out the fake just looking at it. Even an alien would be able to figure it out if they conducted an actual in-depth autopsy. “Well that’s where we get lucky,” Jordan said. “Because someone did cut corners making them: they didn’t only use human DNA. Especially for the internal organs. They didn’t have to the slipshod 3-D printing for the whole body. They substituted organs from animals that resembled the shape of human organs, especially the intestines.” “Gross,” I said. “Even cutting corners though, you’re right, Caleb. The profit margin on a single corpse would still have to be low.” “But we’ve found two fake corpses,” I said, following her point. “Which begs the question of exactly how many there are.” “Even more than that, it narrows down the possible sources,” Tasser said. “The source of the corpses has money.” “Yeah, and our Missionary Marine friends are helping me with Ingrid tomorrow evening. All roads look like they’re pointing to Cadrune,” I said. “So, who wants to come with?”