Chapter 38

Leads

Between Ares and I, our meeting ground was now in my room at the new headquarters in the city. I of course got my own room, which happened to be Celentine’s when she was here.

“I think we’ve got a lead.” Ares said.

“I’d love to hear.” I said, somewhat tired of it all and just wanting some rest. But I push myself and push the others, Xenobia is at stake. “I’m sure you’ve seen what I’ve started here, everyone is on the lookout for rumors of this guy.”

“That’s a good place to start, to solve a mystery. But I do have a lead. There’s a lot to the network of Canines and Murids, along with the Humans and some others. But the figures at the top we have nailed down as much as we can without having found the one we’re looking for.”

“Let me guess, one of them is Genres, the Murid.”

“That’s right.” She said complimentarily. Though that wasn’t hard to guess. “The Canine is Caine, the young new King of their’s. And there’s a Human in the east side who runs a lot of business, though he doesn’t seem to be with them, just of the same type.”

“Wait, Caine? He’s young, my age?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“I know him, I’ve seen him in… my dreams. We talked a few times, he said we should be enemies. He didn’t seem like the others. The other Canines didn’t like me.”

“What is said is different than what is done,” she said, omnipotent as she was, I guessed she knew the short acquaintance I had with Caine.

“At least I’d be glad to kill Genres.” I said.

“Yes, but that doesn’t get us to the one we want. We may need to find them and get information out of them.”

“But they wouldn’t know anything. Just as the Feline King didn’t know. He had no way of stopping it either, living in a nightmare. Maybe, just for these ones like Genres, they revel in their glory of evil, working with the nightmare, not against him.”

“You may be right.” She agreed, seeming hopeless, but that’s why this nightmare hasn’t been found for so long.

“So the best thing is to watch. The Ursine and Bovine are in the loading docks, they can notify the Aves and they can track them down.”

“Perfect idea.”

“But then I’ll have to go in and see what they’re up to.”

The next day was the first report from my lookout of Xenos.

Thor the Ursine and Valentin the Bovine found that a lot of unmarked item had gone to a “Bill Smith” and that the contents, after having been carefully opened with Bovine claws found that they were indeed ammunition items, with drugs concealed in between. The sender also “unnamed”.

I told them about my encounter with Genres a while back and mentioned his guards, describing them in detail, knowing that Genres or some other figure in their gang may be around.

The Aves had tracked down a few suspicious looking characters, though nearly half of everyone around looked suspicious, none seemed to be Genres or Caine.

So I told them to keep an eye out for Genres, a wealthy Murid with body guards as described before. And also to look out for Caine, apparently the new King of the Canines, royalty, who seems to be making his fortune in gun and drug dealings as well.

Now that I think about it, I wouldn’t be surprised that he was the one Dakur had teamed up with, sending an army of armed Canines to battle alongside the Ancients.

Roland had a report from his day. The Equine’s report started long and poetic, building up to a great heroic plot where they had managed to find a city-dwelling Equine and made acquaintances leading up to working with him. They had found common ground with the city Equine by a similar disaffection of those incapable of making it in life, and a knowledge that not everyone is as fortunate as the Equine: capable of making it in life. This was also mentioned to be a notable start of a friendship which would bring down the evil ruling this city.

With the reports in, I got with the other Felines to discuss matters of living, John and the Maiden of Truth, now Nancy, had managed to find a bulk food outlet, but lacked sufficient funds for feeding a dozen Xenos.

That reminded me, I need to get with Clyde and see what he has for money, I’m sure there’s something.

Clyde let me onto the ship. “Hello Dawn.” He said through the ship’s sound system.

“Hi Clyde. What have you been up to? I’m sure it’s quite boring for a robot like you up here, nothing to do.”

“Actually it’s been quite interesting. I’ve been watching the traffic, listening in on conversations, anything suspicious as you said. And I think you’re right that we can’t just go and kill the Murid and the Canine, even interrogation would be futile, but my circuits are loading with details of such activities.”

“Sounds boring.” I said even though that’s what we’re all up to at the moment. That’s what I’ve been having all the other Xenos do, investigating on a rumor line basis.

“Actually I’ve been up to more than just that. Obviously watching you and your health. I’m sure glad that this ship has solar panels and therefore a nearly unlimited supply of energy for me, not that I use much, but I stay busy night and day, so when you’re not up and about I’ve been connecting with the local items and networks they have in this city. I’ve barely scratched the surface but as I looked around I was greeted by various entities as a known subject.”

I looked sideways at him. “Entities? And you’re their subject?”

“Well, for lack of better words, yes. Apparently I’m well known here, though I don’t have any storage cache nor cookies which tell me I’ve been snooping around this city’s networks, like I am now. Many messages came my way telling me that I’ve been missed and they hope I’m doing alright or just wondering about various projects, or seminars I might do in the future.”

I laughed slightly, remembering Clyde’s few hints before. Ones that alluded to his other life and that he has a second job between taking care of Huntresses, only occurring every few hundred years.

“So that reminds me,” he continued, “as you have told me, my memory had been wiped due to a bad crash, believably, and because of your tone in the matter I hypothesized that I was quite a member of yours. Though I cannot deny that many of these new surprises have been, well, surprising.”

“That’s true.” I said, agreeing that the new Clyde was quite surprising in many ways. “But Clyde, I sure you’ve heard that we need a bit of money here, getting food, supplies and whatnot. Did you happen to get anything from a bank?”

“You mean a financial institution?”

“Yes. I know have money here, and though it is your own, we don’t have anything, being from the villages.”

“Actually I did.”

“And?” I asked, trying not to be pushy in this subject.

“Well, I happened to look at the accounts and it does seem like there’s ample resources.”

“That’s a relief, I was hoping that you’d find it.”

“Thank you for the hope. It seemed to have helped in that respect.”

“So?” Now I feel like I’m starting to beg.

“Well, you didn’t tell me what you need, everything seems to have been unfunded up to now. Even in the village everything had been there in large supplies and stockpiled to be fabricated in your temple.”

“Alright. I’ll get to that soon. Actually, we need food, you know who’s here, get a week’s stock of anything for us. And let me know where to pick it up. Anything else I’ll put through you soon enough, I’ll have to talk with John about maintenance.”

Sure enough, I had found John, he had already made a list of items for the headquarters and had been working on getting the items and installing it himself.

At the moment I walked in he was already in the middle of putting in a new fridge.

I let him carry on with his business and had him tell me if he needs further assistance with getting anything, and that food for us all is arriving soon.

I found Bandera walking around aimlessly, finding that there wasn’t much to do in here. She had already been talking to Nancy for some time and had finally ended the rambling, finding walking around aimlessly was more pleasant.

I tried to talk with her, the upset teenager she is, but got nowhere. I couldn’t blame her, she doesn’t have a purpose, nothing like I had when I was her age.

I thought about getting her some books to read, some lessons and teaching her about the things I learned. But I found out she hadn’t learned to read. Then I thought that Nancy would be a great teacher, but with a second thought, discarded that and instead took her out to the ship.

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the ship, you cleaned it and got it ready. You’re probably more familiar than I am, I’ve hardly been in this one.”

“I guess so,” she replied.

“Why don’t we take a tour of the city,” I suggested. “Clyde, take us around and tell us what things are, I need a tour of this city as much as she does.”

A second later the quiet hum of the ship’s engines started up and we flew upwards and slowly maneuvered between buildings.

“Our starting location is the main shipping yard of Xenobia. Anything shipped to or from other planets goes through here, though there is a substantial local traffic here as well.

“The large building you see is the center of Xenobia, being the widest and tallest building on this planet. It seats the head of government and has a considerable open-air conference arena, fifty stories tall, holding over twenty-thousand seats, each a room to itself, bots to send messages and holographic cameras and displays. The center of the arena holds a holographic notice and display board.

“Notice the live feed on the screen inside the cabin.”

Bandera and I looked, “A bit overkill isn’t it?” I said. “I don’t think we have twenty-thousand representatives to fill all the seats.”

The video showed us exactly what Clyde said, a huge arena with conference seats and bots flying about.

“Continuing our tour we have another fifty-seven buildings hosting many companies specializing in commerce, trade and inter-planetary business. Continuing past that, we have more buildings containing the headquarters of all Xenobia’s financial institutes and housing inter-galactic banks, small and large. Just a bit further out are a number of building holding offices for traveling inside and out of Xenobia.”

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We seemed to have been circling around and around the center. I asked Clyde to takes us off in some direction.

“Complying now,” Clyde responded. “We are now flying north-northwest and heading into the domain of the city dwelling Amphibian Xenos. As you see there are many fountains and ponds interspersed between buildings and houses. The city skyline drops remarkably for the average. It is said that the ponds hold most of the inhabitants, having been built underground and underwater. They enjoy life fishing and conversing underwater in their taverns or cafes which they have submersed deliberately. On record the deepest cafe is a remarkable five-thousand feet below sea level.”

We soared over this part of the city, looking at the dug out ponds. As we got further north the ponds became lakes and natural, not manmade, the houses became smaller and wooden and the reading outside told us it was getting much colder.

I asked Clyde to take us further north, I could see some mountains and asked to see them up close.

Another twenty minutes or so, at high speed, being out of and above strict city limits, we came to a vast tundra, lakes and ponds abounded, no houses, hardly any wildlife to be seen even if we would have been closer to the ground. A few more minutes the lakes disappeared and the ground came towards us suddenly. The mountains rose up above us and our altitude climbed even more.

Clyde started his narration again, “Here you see the northern mountains, quite tall, but not the tallest. The tallest mountains are reserved for the Aves in the northeast. Here, there does seem to be a family or two of Aves, this one seeming to be quite large for their species and having brown thick feathers keeping them warm.”

I looked outside, we had slowed down quite a bit and could see Aves and birds flying around the mountaintops.

It was a beautiful scene of white on gray in front of the blue and darkening sky. It was getting late, much more dramatic being this far north.

“Have you had enough?” I asked Bandera.

“No…” she breathed. She was glued to the window, admiring the scenery, the altitude and everything that wasn’t our abolished village or the city. “I love it.”

She turned around and gave me a big hug.

Clyde circled around one of the mountaintops again and headed back south increasing speed and decreasing altitude.

“Well, I guess we’ve finished our geography lesson for today,” I said. “Let’s do some target practice on the way back.”

I picked up a remote and opened a few of the cabinets, disclosing throwing knives and a wall for target practice.

“Try these,” I told Bandera. “If you’re going to be a Huntress you might need to practice with these.”

I picked up a knife and threw it at the center target. Near bullseye. “Now you try.”

She picked one up and gave it a good throw.

The rest of the flight back I taught her the best that I could and she ended up being not to bad, not half as bad as myself.

“We’ll continue lessons and training tomorrow.” I told her. She had a slight apprehensive look on her face. Of course she would, she grew up in the village, hardly an education. Now, she’ll be the next Huntress.

By the time we got back everyone had eaten dinner. Actually the dinner that Clyde had ordered. Everyone was grateful for some food, but regretfully, nothing as fresh as living outside of the city. But sure enough everyone was catered to.

John had taken up a point from which he learned while working with Celentine the previous Huntress, “Always stay alert and don’t blow your cover when your working like this.”

All of them agreed. They had understood what questions to ask and what not to, so as to not create any suspicions.

“There’s such things as accents,” John continued, “and if you can’t hide it, telling them you’re from the village works just fine, as long as you have a story to go along with it. Clothing should match the current trend, as usually a villager coming to the city would want to fit in.”

The Ursine asked about money to get clothing, that his job in the shipping yard should pay for that. “There’s no treasure chest of gold to pick from.” He had said. Not knowing anything about what I had just talked about with Clyde.

John continued on his speech about fitting in, lots of mannerisms that catch attention, like seeming lost or obviously snooping in on someone else conversation. “But, the underlying rule is that if there’s no data, people will invent it. If you don’t tell them, they’ll think otherwise and be suspicious.”

That spent the rest of our night in good conversation until few of us remained. Bandera had stayed, pleasantly listening, actually seeming quite curious. I was glad she was taking interest in this, she has a lot to learn, and even I’m not so familiar with business in the city, I couldn’t teach her these things.

Out there, the jungle is my life, here, the city is her jungle.

The next day had started with Bandera eagerly asking about her next lesson for today. I hadn’t even thought that one through yet, there’s lots I could teach her. But I was still plagued with the ever-going problem of finding the Nightmare, of which I had no other name for him. But it was fitting, as the King had described him; threats to do as he says, blackouts and mind-splitting headaches if you don’t comply, starting with a vision of compelling and divine reason. A nightmare.

I decided to take up a point from John’s speech last night: clothing. I asked John to go with Bandera to get something for me and herself, I still feel very uncomfortable walking outside in my suit. Plus the police probably still have me on record.

Now with her gone for half of the day I could start on some business while keeping her from walking around aimlessly.

I walked outside to talk to Clyde about getting myself removed from all police records when a hoard of Talpas came out of the ground and surrounded me.

“Hello Huntress!” They chimed together.

I was shocked and surprised. They had come to help with the renovations and they had spotted me from under the ground. Very interesting, I thought. Something I hadn’t realized before. “How did you guys find me?” I asked.

“We know. We just know.” One said, seeming to be the leader.

“It never crossed my mind, but you always know where I am.”

“Weren’t you given the Elixir of Vie?”

“The what?”

“I think it makes you see better, like in the dark or something.”

“Oh yes,” now I remember, but they never told me what it was. “I can see everywhere now, even in your tunnels and caves.”

“Caves?” He shouted in his innocent voice. “We don’t live in caves, those are our home, palaces and mines, the earth which supports us. We just call it something else.”

“So what about that potion? You took it too?” I asked.

“No, we can naturally see in the dark.”

“And you can see people walking above the surface too?”

“Sometimes. But we can always see you.”

I wondered about that. What was it that made me so obvious to the natives.

“Magic,” he said, hearing my thoughts, “you’re one of us.”

But I wasn’t. I’m a fighter, Cara…

As I had started to wonder some more he jumped out of his hole and asked me to show him around. “There’s work to be done!” He shouted, and immediately started off to where I had come from, the shipping container.

“Alright, alright,” I was laughing now, “I’ll let you inside and show you the place.”

I led him inside, the rest had stayed so as not to dirty the floor.

The Dryads were busy with transporting five gallon buckets of water, as big as they were. Apparently they had made one of the bigger rooms into a greenhouse, and were now filling up buckets of water for the plants.

I didn’t have time to ask about all of that and instead brought the single Talpa construction manager quietly around to the other rooms, trying not to start a battle of the natives inside our headquarters.

The Talpa was looking around the space in a professional manner, “Looks like a cramped space, though there’s sure enough ceiling. I don’t know how you can’t think of economizing space when there an extra five feet above your heads.”

“That’s fine, we need it for the bigger Xenos. But I’ll show you the lowest point. I think we can start from there and go deeper.”

We came to the last room. It was set up as a bedroom for the Equines with a few left over bookshelves and a computer.

“We’ll start here!” He exclaimed and burrowed into the ground. A second later, “You don’t have to stand around and watch. You can come back in a few hours and check on us if you like.”

“Thanks, I’ll see you soon.”

I walked back up to try to see Clyde again. Hopefully no more surprise attacks.

“Clyde, have you looked through the police records, or seen the Xenobia’s most wanted list?”

“I think I glanced at it.” He replied, seeming to be in the middle of some other operation.

“Am I on their wanted list?”

“Now that I mention it, you are, but I hadn’t thought why. I’m assuming it’s because of an incident which occurred before my loss of memory, because I wouldn’t have any idea how you could have been on the most wanted list when all you’ve done is gone to get some breakfast a few days back.”

“That’s a long story, but I’ll have to ask if you had any way to take me off of it. I’m so tired of sitting around here and not being able to go out and do anything.”

“I’ll see what I can do. I’m just in the middle of a mega-algorithmic computing competition and have most of my circuits busy with it. Sorry if I seem emotionless, it’s eating away at my RAM.”

I sat around waiting for Clyde to finish, going though the live video feed around the city. Clyde had gotten access a while ago.

Feed came though from all around the city. People walking down the sidewalk, cars going by, various intersections, a few receptions and lobbies. That was about all we had, tons of it. Of course the private cameras would be unavailable. This was just the city’s public surveillance.

I was looking at a particularly boring street, people walking by, nothing interesting at all, until I saw Genres and his entourage.

I had found him!

I quickly noted the streets and followed him on camera. He was close by, situated near the loading docks of course.

He was off the streets in no time and had ventured into one of the buildings. I noted which one and put all the external cameras around it on my screen, there sure were a lot of them. I searched for any inside cameras, but could only see into the lobby, then a camera in the elevator and I saw one of his guards push a button, stood there for a minute and walked out on the 175th floor.

I nearly jumped out of my seat to find him, but then I remembered, I’d have the building flooded with police with me being a very wanted criminal. So I sat and waited, not so calmly, checking to see if he came out. He didn’t.

After another hour I checked if Clyde had finished his competition.

“Yes, I’ve finished, about two hours ahead of time. Left the others in the dust, as you say, and won the competition. They said I’m about a thousand years in advance of any technology in the confederacy. So I took my prize and shut down all connections. They won’t be able to find me and hunt me down for interviews. Maybe I’ll send them a little message of thanks tomorrow.”

“Wow,” I was amazed. I didn’t know that Clyde would have been this talented. “Aren’t there others like you on this planet? I’m sure if you came here, others would have also.”

“There are, just none as old as me. Youngsters, but still learning.”

But his memory had been wiped, does he still have some? Maybe some basic programming that makes him better than the younger ones.

“Funnily enough,” Clyde said, “I was the one who gave the idea to someone to start with mega-algorithms so that some day a whole planet could be processed. Mind you, that’s billions of people, at one time, not to mention their ancestors who have made things to last or happen again. We’re talking about the whole planet, not just a few people. And people can be quite variable, let me tell you.”

“So,” I said, trying to get back to my life and saving Xenobia from the Nightmare. “What do you know about this building?” I pointed out the one which Genres walked into.

“Nothing much, it’s a few blocks away, close. I can give you a list of the registered companies and occupants if you like.”

“Sure.”

A list popped up in my goggles. A few pages of businesses and people. I sorted it by floor number, looking at number 175. Listed was a company for international and galactic shipping of handcrafted Xenobian arms, The Armory of Xenobia shipping company. Sure enough, it was owned by John Smith. What a fitting name for someone who doesn’t want to be found out. And he had the whole floor.

This might be more difficult than I think. Maybe I can send in one of my guys to act a cleaner and locate Genres. I thought about it. I’ll have to ask Thor or Valentin.

“Clyde keep an eye on Genres, he’s the little Murid with bodyguards. He apparently works on the 175th floor of that building.”

“Will do. And you seem to have been erased from the police records here, as well as the most wanted and any recognition systems in any public or governmental databases.”

“Thanks,” I said. Glad to have Clyde around, even if he did have his memory erased.

It was getting close to dusk, my teammates should be coming home.

Walking inside I found Bandera working with John at the table. “What are you two up to?” I asked.

Bandera looked up at me and rolled her head around and back,“Learning to read,” she said in a dramatically deep voice.

“You have to start somewhere,” I said, knowing how frustrating it may seem at first. “Keep it up, learning to read is more important than you think. It’s gotten me out of a few tight spots already.”

I could almost see a small glint of hope in her eye, which was quickly drowned when she looked down at the book. It was only day one of learning.

The rest of our crew trickled in for the day and I began with their debrief. It was the same, hardly any leads. But I had mine. I told them about finding Genres, where he was spotted and confirmation of his business office headquarters.

“I knew it!” Valentin interjected. “He was right under our snouts. Now we’ll put and end to his dirty business.”

“I’m afraid that his business is completely legal,” I said, “Even if I did object to it, and if he did some very illegal things with it.”

“Legal or not he’s going down.”

“I completely agree and I will have you, since you do seem so eager to get rid of him, investigate his office and tell me the floor plan, and keep an eye on him for a day or two.”

“Sounds good.” Valentin replied in his low Bovine rumble. “And what if I find him… accidentally dead?”

I sighed, hoping that it could be that easy. “Soon, but I need to interrogate him first, maybe he has some clues he doesn’t even know about.”

“What do you mean? He either coughs up or not.”

“The Nightmare. The voice that controls them, the hidden hand behind all of this. The King’s diary explains it all very beautifully, they have no idea what’s going on, just following orders and if they don’t, they black out, and if they continue to not comply, they eventually find themselves locked in a room, all engines down, nowhere to go and committing suicide with or without their consent.”

“But what if the answers go nowhere? What if he commits suicide before we get the information out of him?” John asked.

“I don’t think he’s going to die on us, he’s too valuable to the Nightmare to die for a little interrogation. And if the questions go nowhere, then we’ll have to kill him. For the best of Xenobia.”

“What business did you say he ran?” John asked.

“The Armory of Xenobia shipping company.” I said.

That’s the biggest arms shipping company in this planet, and no doubt one of the largest grossing income businesses on the planet as well.”

“I’m sure they could find a replacement.”

“Someone that’s not under the Nightmare’s control? I’m sure he would replace Genres as soon as he could, even if it was from miles away.”

“I’m still here,” I said, “and until we find the Nightmare, we keep fighting.”

They all nodded their approval, smiling and cheering a little, but it was quite a task no one was up to handle. They’ll have to keep following my lead.