Qimmiq Port
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.29 Interstellar
Janus and Mick returned to the main yurt to find a flurry of minor officials whisking papers and tablets and food and cups from the long table. The trading port elder was calm and professional, sipping her tea. Koni and Lira looked tired and harassed. Khulan, the young local trader, looked exhausted and defeated. Tenoch, the local Verazlan, looked like he might snap off the arms of his chair. Paddack Gibson, the Pugarian merchant, looked smug.
“What have you discovered?” Janus asked.
“Everything and nothing,” Koni said. “The case is as Tenoch described. On the merits of the evidence alone, I am forced to agree with the Honorable Cuauhtémoc’s judgment.”
Lira looked uncomfortable with that pronouncement.
“I’m missing something, aren’t I?” Janus said.
“The penalties for the defamation of a Verazlan judge,” Lira said. “Especially one from a noble family.”
“However low,” Koni said.
“Yes,” Lira said. “It might have been a fine and a ban from future adjudications, but Khulan has already lost everything in the original judgment.”
“So, what? She gets exiled?”
“Whipped,” Koni said. “Ten lashes with a stunner whip. I don’t know if they even have one here. It has been a long time since that particular punishment was meted out.”
Janus felt sick. “Because no one challenges the judges anymore.”
“No, they do not,” Koni said, looking at Tenoch. “Although I must caution the Honorable Cuauhtémoc regarding the number of judgments he has found in favor of Paddack Gibson in the past years. It may be time for him to return to Veraz.”
“That may be best,” Tenoch agreed.
“No need to be so dire, my friend,” Paddack Gibson began, but Tenoch Cuauhtémoc silenced him with a glare.
“Well, none of this is happening,” Janus said.
Lira looked at him. “Janus…”
“No,” he said. “Just, no. It’s clear the ‘Honorable’ Cuauhtémoc has been in bed with Paddack Gibson for a long time and that this is just one in a string of injustices perpetrated by two thieves.”
“Janus,” Koni said sternly. “I must warn you that if you continue along these lines, you will find yourself strapped to a post alongside Khulan.”
“Not likely,” Mick said calmly, patting the assault rifle hanging at his hip.
“That’s all right, Mick,” Janus said. “I’m just stating what everyone at this table knows. How do I prove it?”
“You may not be able to,” Lira said warningly. “But if there’s any evidence of wrongdoing, it will be out at the site where Khulan’s convoy was attacked.”
Janus looked around the table. The elder looked back with curious eyes. Khulan and Koni looked hopeful. Tenoch looked like an animal backed into a corner, and Paddack Gibson looked afraid. Janus grinned. “If that’s all that’s required, then let’s get out there.”
“If you can just get my cargo back, I’ll withdraw my accusation,” Khulan said gratefully. “I just want to keep my trading license.”
Janus looked at the sweating Pugarian trader and said, “I think we’ll manage better than that.”
***
It took them two hours to cover the 110 kilometers to the site where Khulan had lost her cargo. Janus and his team could have made it in a quarter of that time, but the elder insisted that the Qimmiq Port administration, Khulan Naranbaatar, Paddack Gibson, and Tenoch Cuauhtémoc all be present to witness the investigation. The whole coterie had been loaded into a pair of local crawlers. They were reliable vehicles, but they were made to be efficient, not quick.
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Janus would have liked to get it done faster, but two things stopped him. The first was that he wanted to make sure Gibson and Cuauhtémoc received full punishment for their crimes, and he didn’t want there to be a single micron of wiggle room for them to claim they’d been treated unjustly.
The second was that, while Janus and Mick had returned to the tent, he’d had Ryler plug the datacube into the pedestal and monitor the score. As Janus had suspected, his decision had had an impact—whether it had been accurately predicted by the “Oracle” or not, he couldn’t know—but there had been a small negative fluctuation, and that corresponded to the moment when Mick had threatened to prevent Janus from being punished.
It wasn’t enough to make them lose the Trials, not yet, but Janus had a theory that the outcome of this adjudication would have consequences beyond the livelihood of a single trader.
“There’s the site!” Khulan said, pointing. The Qimmiqan trader was wearing simple furs with a facemask and oxygen bottle. “It looks like the vehicles are intact!”
“Let’s not rush things,” Janus said.
The reason Khulan’s people had to abandon the vehicles was that they’d been ambushed by rockjaws.
“We’ll wait here for your go-ahead, Emissary,” the port elder said over the comm. “Please link us a feed from your suits, although I’d prefer you wait for us to join you before disturbing the wreckage.”
“Understood, Elder,” Janus said, jogging back to the buggies in easy, bouncing strides.
“Did you see any of them?” Mick asked excitedly.
“Not yet,” Janus said.
According to Khulan’s drivers, the convoy had been ambushed by rockjaws, a local rock-like lifeform that sounded suspiciously like a trilith.
The main difference between a rockjaw and a trilith, though, aside from morphology, was that rockjaws weren’t usually aggressive. They would attack humans and their vehicles, but unlike their Irkallan cousins, they had plenty of alternate food sources. “Have you ever heard of rockjaws attacking convoys before?”
“Only by accident,” Khulan said. “Accidents happen to Paddack Gibson’s partners far too often.”
“Why did you do business with him, then?” Lira asked.
“I got greedy,” Khulan said, unashamed. “I thought I could fulfill the terms.”
Janus nodded. The young trader’s ambition and temper made it harder to sympathize with her. She’d taken too big a contract on too tight a timeline, which had forced her to route her convoy through a more dangerous area. She was lucky none of her people had been killed.
He started the buggy’s engine. “You wouldn’t happen to have a Hunter shatter gun, would you, Mick?”
“Nah, boss, but I did grab one of these,” Mick said, hefting his new toy. It looked like an oversized revolver. “Six-cylinder rotary remote charge launcher.”
“You are way too excited about this,” Lira said.
“Aww, don’t be like that, Lira. After all, this is how we met!” Mick said. He was riding with Koni, Hunter-style, with his back to the driver so he could focus on shooting. “Remember when you thought ‘big triliths’ were a myth made up by Hunters to shakedown hardworking dome dwellers?”
“I didn’t think that,” Lira said. “That was all Janus.”
“You are all crazy and strange in the head,” Koni said, although she sounded amused.
“Let’s get this done,” Janus said. “We still have the Trials to win.”
Janus drove his buggy down into the rocky bowl, and the rest of the team followed, leaving the two crawlers and the extra two-seater buggy behind.
He’d thought about leaving Fury with the crawlers, but after the incident in Hayyam, he wasn’t sure how she’d take being separated from him without one of the other team members to watch her. The last thing they needed was Fury breaking loose while they were dealing with triliths—or whatever the local version of them happened to be.
They drove closer. Janus could see the abandoned convoy more clearly now. There were four haulers—simple combustion-engine trucks with airtight cabins and modified air intakes. The lead vehicle had been all but destroyed, the cabin had been torn open like a tinfoil wrapper, and the trailer had been knocked over. The other three haulers showed varying amounts of damage. None of them were going anywhere. “So much for rockjaws not being aggressive,” Janus said.
“Yeah, boss,” Mick said, twisting in his seat to look over Koni’s shoulder. “But where are they?”
There was nothing in the bowl but the stricken haulers, boulders, and sand. Janus took another look at the boulders and got the suspicion they were more than rocks. “Hold up!” he said.
Lira and Koni pulled up next to him.
“Mick, think you can hit one of those big rocks from here?”
“The ones that look like they’re minding their own business around the trashed vehicles?” Mick grinned. “Coming right up!” The Hunter jumped off the buggy, took a wide stance, and sighted the launcher. There was a pop, barely audible in the thin air, and moments later, a red, blinking light appeared on one of the biggest rocks.
“That’s it?” Lira asked.
Mick took two swaggering steps and sat back on the buggy. He thumbed a button on the launcher’s firing assembly, and the remote charge detonated.
It wasn’t a large explosion, more of a sharp crack and a puff of smoke, but the boulder split in half like it had been struck by a giant hammer and chisel. “Woohoo!” Mick said.
“That was not a rockjaw,” Koni said. “That was just a rock.”
Janus was about to tell Mick to hit another one when the ground shifted under them. “Oh, crap! Drive, drive, drive!” He cranked on the accelerator, lurching forward as the sandy ground shifted and bulged.
A half-dozen rockjaws, each the size of a buggy, rose out of the sand and gravel and attacked!