Banjin Colle clicked open his pocket watch and looked down at it. He was appalled to realize that even this wasn’t enough to lighten his mood. He clicked it closed and shoved the watch back into his pocket. He cursed his handler for at least the fiftieth time since this all began. The task set him by that damnable man had seemed straightforward enough. Some fool had allowed files related to Project Penumbra to escape the loving embrace of a hyper-secure facility that appeared on exactly no official documents. Banjin had been tasked with getting them back. Disagree though he might with the project, he had made vague comments that could be construed as promises of allegiance to a particular government. He felt that meant he had to see the task through. It should have been easy, but it wasn’t. The past month had been an exercise in cultivating frustration.
He’d started his investigation at the facility, which had no official designation. The staff there called it Job Site One. He reasoned that the name implied the existence of additional Job Site locations engaged in work so sensitive, so potentially destabilizing, that they had been scrubbed from official existence. Then again, maybe there was only a single site. That’s the world of clandestine services for you, Banjin mused. Sometimes, most times, you never really knew the extent of the truth. All he really knew was that Job Site One existed, and someone there had apparently dropped a ball of epic proportions. Except, no one had. He’d personally reviewed the security logs, surveillance video, digital forensics reports, staff interviews, and conducted a few interviews that bordered on interrogations himself. Nobody had made a mistake that he could find, and no one knew how or when the files had gone missing.
It was only dumb luck that they had found out about the missing files. Someone had stumbled onto the facility’s cloaked network and tried to breach it. In-house security had swung into action, just to discover that the culprit wasn’t some malicious foreign actor. It was just an overly bright student playing around in her off-time. Banjin had made a mental note of her name. People that bright and talented could be useful. The attempted breach had triggered a facility-wide deep sweep of the network and related storage. Those scans happened every six months, but this one had come a good three months early. Some slight irregularities had alerted security to a potential problem in the research division’s local and system memory. A closer look revealed that the local files and system copies were simply gone. Someone had spoofed the system into reading them as intact. Everyone on staff with even remotely the right skills had undergone five kinds of deception detection during repeated interviews and passed with ease. No one on staff had gone mysteriously missing. It was as if the files had simply willed themselves on vacation.
After a week of getting nowhere, Banjin gave up on the facility as a dead-end. He’d been sure he’d find something on the base and didn’t like that he’d so badly misread the situation. He had also found it an annoying necessity to reassure the head of security, the head of research operations, and the facility director that no one working at the facility was about to suffer unfortunate accidents. They had all looked so desperately afraid that Banjin took pity on them. He sent an encrypted report to his handler that everyone at the facility had done exemplary work and that even he hadn’t been able to discern how or by whom the files had been taken. With the most promising lead getting him nowhere, he moved on to the less promising leads.
That had started the usual games with Temera Amaluy. It seemed like every time he arrived somewhere, she had gotten there first. He knew that wasn’t the truth. Based on his mental scorecard, they were running about even. Of course, neither of them seemed to be getting anywhere. That race to nowhere had gone on for the better part of three weeks as Banjin and Temera traveled farther and farther away from support and their respective governments. Then, Banjin finally found what felt like a solid piece of intelligence. That had led him even farther into what he considered the frontier.
He landed at what he found was a surprisingly modern spaceport given how far out they were. That patina of modernity had swiftly given way to more archaic structures as he traveled away from the port. The buildings themselves weren’t that old, but they’d been made based on archaic designs of brick, concrete, and steel, rather than the modern composites found on capital worlds. Banjin even understood the rationale. Modern composites took a sophisticated manufacturing infrastructure. Importing those composites was hideously expensive. So, settlers built with what they could manufacture with local resources. Any world that could support human life or could be terraformed to do so typically offered the base components needed for these more primitive building materials. Still, the old-style buildings left him mildly unsettled, as though that fragile steel or even more fragile concrete might give way beneath his feet at any moment.
At least the local transportation services were civilized enough to use bot drivers. Banjin didn’t prefer them because of their skill, but because the bot drivers would only engage you in conversation if you asked them to do so. He luxuriated in the quiet as they slowly approached the building. Banjin had the driver stop a few blocks from his destination, paid, and got out. He wasn’t sure what to expect at the building and didn’t want any unpleasant surprises. He approached slowly, wary of traps or surveillance, but found no evidence of either. A host of microsensors embedded in his overcoat fed a stream of data into his pad, which he eyed every so often. If someone was out there waiting for him, they had done an exceptional job of hiding the fact. After a few tense minutes of watching the building, he finally approached. He didn’t normally go in for these cold approaches, but that Amaluy woman had beaten him to the punch one time too many lately. It was making him worry he was slowing down enough that he’d be obsolete soon.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The front door opened into a plain lobby with no receptionist or attendant. He spotted what looked to pass for autolifts and walked over to them. There were actual, dear gods above, handwritten signs attached to the lifts that read, “Out of Service, please use stairs,” with an arrow pointing off to the left. Banjin felt like he’d walked onto the set of some ancient film, but followed the arrow to a door that was propped open. He eyed the stairs. They were made of some wood he didn’t recognize.
“The things I endure for the security of the state,” he muttered as he started climbing the stairs. His contact had suggested that the man who lived in this building had once dealt in extremely dangerous information before he faked his death and moved to the outer fringes of civilization. Banjin approved. He had a similar exit strategy in place for the moment he decided he was well and truly done with the spy trade. He wasn’t under any illusions that he’d be allowed to live if he ever announced he was out for real. He knew where to find too many skeletons, because he’d buried more than a few of them. Even if his contact was right about this man’s history, the whole trip still felt slightly speculative. Banjin might not have come if he’d had a better lead to follow. He still hadn’t formulated a full plan for what to do if the ex-information broker had the files.
His handler would no doubt prefer the man simply die, but Banjin didn’t especially relish the role of assassin. He’d played that role before when necessity demanded it, but it struck him as an inelegant solution. He’d tentatively settled on just offering to buy back the files if they could reach an amicable amount. A man who disappeared once could do it again. Besides, Banjin didn’t believe for a moment the man had actually commissioned the theft. If he had the files at all, it made the man a victim more than an accomplice. Yes, he decided, he’d offer to purchase the blasted files. With that settled, he paused, pulled out his pocket watch and smiled at it. There was balance in the universe once more. He pushed open a door and stepped out onto the appropriate floor. He gave the wooden doors he passed dubious looks. They wouldn’t do much to keep out a determined intruder.
As if hearing his thoughts, a door down the hall exploded outward in a wild spray of wooden splinters. A woman’s body landed in the debris, and he heard her let out of pained moan. She lifted her head and Banjin froze in shock at the sight of Temera’s bruised and bloodied features. He’d never seen her lose a fight. He’d never even heard of it happening. She shook her head and her eyes locked on his. She looked afraid. He took a single step toward her, and she swung her head in a slight but definite negative before her face swung back to the door. The exchange had felt like it took whole minutes, but only a few real seconds had passed. Banjin didn’t know what he thought was about to come through that door, but it was nothing his imagination would have conjured.
Banjin tried to make sense of it as, of all things, a young man in a dark freighter captain’s coat stepped out of the door. A deeply intuitive part of his mind screamed at him that this was no freighter captain. The man moved all wrong. He was all smooth, pantherine lethality. There was a calm distance in his expression that Banjin knew all too well. Then the counterfeit freighter captain drew a sword and assumed a strike position that made Banjin’s heart skip a beat. That sword, that move, he’d seen them before. His grandfather had owned a sword like that, had moved like that. Metal that flat gray color only came from one place in the entire galaxy. What in the name of all that was holy was one of them doing here? He’ll kill her, Banjin realized. A word from Banjin’s childhood rose from the depths of his memory. A word from a time when he’d lived with his grandfather and, however unwittingly, trained like that young man had probably once trained.
“Kisham,” Banjin shouted.
It was the word his grandfather had used when he wanted Banjin to stop and attend. The young man froze, shock cracking through the coolly distant expression, and his head whipped toward Banjin. The distraction was tiny, but Temera Amaluy was a professional. The second the young man glanced away, she was up and fleeing down the hallway as fast as her legs would carry her. The young man took a step as if to give chase, then stopped. Either he didn’t think he could catch her, or he didn’t consider killing her to be worth the effort of running her down. Instead, he turned toward Banjin and started to stalk his way. Banjin was a dangerous man and knew it, but the sight of that fake captain closing the distance with that sword in hand splashed ice water over his soul. It was like staring down the approach of one of the Bekanin Shades, and Banjin wanted no part of it. He took Temera’s example and ran for his life.