Elsewhere

Banjin Colle idly checked the timepiece he kept in his pocket. It was an ancient thing of springs and gears that he’d found hiding on a shelf in a shop on some backwater planet. He searched his memory for the name of the planet and came up empty. He supposed it was possible that he’d never known its name in the first place. He’d bought the timepiece on a lark, amused by the anachronism of owning such a thing. Banjin had learned early on that people in dangerous lines of work needed one of two things to keep them stable. Some threw themselves into their work, seeking promotions and ever-increasing levels of challenge and responsibility. Others found a series of amusements and tiny obsessions.

He’d adopted the latter approach, as he didn’t particularly crave advancement or more responsibility. Banjin had fallen into his line of work almost by accident, more as a byproduct of chance assignments and compatible personalities than intention. By the time he realized what was happening, it’d been too late to back out. So, he found things to pique his interest while the years ticked away. The watch served as both amusement and a minor obsession. The shopkeeper told him it was called a pocket watch. Banjin had thrown himself into a months-long quest to understand the history of the odd little devices. He opined to casual acquaintances that the timepieces ought rightly to be called vest watches. After all, they were traditionally worn attached to a vest. Despite his admittedly petty quibble with the nomenclature, he’d liked it enough to track down one of the three experts within a reasonable number of wormhole transits to get it restored to working order. He justified keeping and using it on the grounds that every man should have at least one affectation. The pocket watch was his.

A few enemies had taken note of the watch over the years and vowed to destroy the personal treasure. They were all dead now or so deep in hiding that they might as well be dead. The watch ticked on in blissful, innocent ignorance of the death threats that had been levied against it. Banjin thought that gave the clockwork mechanism a certain charm. You couldn’t intimidate the watch the way you could those unreliable AIs. All of those self-preservation protocols and programmed sentience made them almost as vulnerable as human beings. Banjin clicked the cover closed and slipped the watch back into his pocket before offering the closed door a baleful look. His presence had been requested, no, demanded on the shortest possible notice. Yet, there he sat, waiting outside the office while his handler did the gods only knew what. After waiting another five minutes, Banjin’s patience gave out. He stood, gave the secretary a curt nod, and left. He heard her yell after him.

“Sir. Sir! He’s expecting you.”

Banjin conceded that his handler might very well be doing something important, but it was equally likely that the man was playing some kind of childish power game. Time had not made Banjin Colle more tolerant of those games. He’d been an operative with two decades of experience under his belt before he’d semi-retired. The truth was that he didn’t need the work, which meant he could take a pass on stupid power plays. Let the young fools put up with that nonsense, he thought. It wasn’t as though he actually liked his handler, let alone owed him anything. Besides, he estimated there was only a five percent chance that his handler would send someone to kill him for the offense. It was a risk Banjin was willing to run, as not many people would willingly accept such an assignment even if it was offered.

He stopped in front of the autolift and swung his hand past the sensor in a sharp downward motion, telling the building’s AI both that he needed the lift and that he was traveling down. He’d been places where people still pressed actual buttons to call the autolift. He’d thought those places were terribly primitive worlds until he’d visited planets where electricity was reserved for a ruling elite. You could always find a world that was more savage or more depraved if you kept traveling for long enough. He’d done a lot of traveling in his time. The autolift doors were sliding open when he heard rapid footsteps close on him from behind, accompanied by a sharp bellow.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“Banjin!”

Banjin turned toward the man who bore down on him like an avalanche. His handler, a man whose real name Banjin had never been able to ferret out, glowered at him from several feet away. Banjin allowed that glower to shatter against his cool indifference. It was no secret to either man who would survive a physical confrontation. The silence stretched out until it hummed between them like a wire under tension that had just been struck. His handler broke first.

The man blew out a breath and looked away before he spoke. “Where are you going, Banjin?”

“Home. Don’t summon me here again, handler. I can find better ways to waste my time than lounging outside your office. Your secretary is pretty, but she’s not that pretty.”

“I wasn’t wasting your time.”

“You demanded I come here at fast as possible. You demanded I report the moment I made planetfall. I complied. Then, to reward me for my efforts, you left me cooling my heels outside your office for fifty-seven minutes. You most certainly wasted my time.”

Banjin turned back toward the autolift, which still stood open by some minor miracle.

“Wait. I’ll double your fee.”

Banjin came up short. “What disaster could possibly justify that?”

“Do you remember a discussion we had once about the Penumbra Project?”

Banjin turned toward his handler. “I do. I seem to recall telling you that I thought it was a bad idea.”

“You did. I happened to agree with you. Others didn’t. It was pursued over my objections. Come back to my office. We’ll discuss what I need from you.”

Banjin thought it over for a few seconds before nodding. He trailed after the handler. Banjin smiled at the secretary as he walked past her. She seemed momentarily startled before offering a smile in return. He made a mental note to talk to her again before he went haring off into the galaxy to fix this latest crisis. He was semi-retired after all. That meant he could afford a few minutes here and there to attend to his personal life. When the office door clicked closed behind him, though, Banjin was all business again.

“So, what am I looking at here? Infiltration? Exfiltration? Assassination?”

The handler shook his head. “None of the above. I need you on recovery.”

“Recovery isn’t in my bag of tricks. You know that.”

“I know, but I can’t send the usual people.”

Banjin leveled a flat stare at his handler. It was an expression that he’d found made people become abruptly talkative. “Why?”

“We’re not the only players involved. It’s not confirmed, yet, but rumor has it that Queen Lestrena has dispatched her favorite on this one.”

Banjin grimaced. “Damnable woman.”

“Lestrena?”

“Oh, I expect she is as well. I meant her favorite.”

Banjin had crossed paths with her on half a dozen occasions. Every encounter had resulted in abject failure for both of them. If they were both sent to bring someone home, that person invariably wound up dead. If they were both sent to retrieve information, the only source of data was inevitably destroyed. He honestly believed that if they were both sent to make sure a relief ship filled with kittens, food, and free-floating euphoria made it safely to some neutral port, they’d end up together in an escape pod helplessly watching as the ship flew into a star, or was eaten by a previously unknown species of space octopus, or was crushed in the vengeful fist of a recently awakened god. No, he was definitely not a fan of Temera Amaluy. To be fair, he didn’t expect that she much cared for him. The handler was right, though. The normal recovery team wasn’t up to the task. Temera would take them apart without even breathing hard.

“All right,” Banjin said. “Exactly what am I recovering, and where do I start looking for it?”