“So you gave a bunch of information to an assassin or his handler whose job may or may not involve killing me. But what the void did you get out of it?”
Delovoa walked across the room to a glass cabinet. He opened the door and carefully removed an ornate sculpture of some kind.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a crystal-porcelain figurine from Onyeu representing happiness. It’s a water fowl. They didn’t allow any to be taken off the planet. And of course, the planet was essentially destroyed in the war. It is probably the only one left in existence.”
I glowered at Delovoa, who was lightly stroking the object.
“That’s a duck?”
“They had a different word for it,” he said haughtily, “zshu-maen.”
I couldn’t believe it.
“Give me that,” I said, stepping forward.
“No!” Delovoa screamed. “Help! Help! Help!” He shrieked.
One of his boy-toy twinks came running into the room.
I pointed a gun at him.
“Go away,” I demanded.
The twink screamed and ran.
I plodded a few steps forward and it hit me square in the chest. I felt my head go light and my feet and hands turn to ice.
“Great,” I managed to squeak.
My gun dropped from my limp fingers and I soon followed it to the ground.
As my heart was seizing up I tried to occupy myself by counting the squares on Delovoa’s carpet. No, they weren’t squares, they were triangles. Or squares in triangles? Dumb carpet.
It was like I was underwater holding my breath. Maybe I was in space. Belvaille had finally lost its protective shield—probably because Delovoa had forgotten to fix it while he was off trading for ducks.
Time goes weird when you’re dying. I could feel a lifetime slide by. Not a particularly interesting lifetime, though. Maybe the life of a librarian who wasn’t allowed to read any books.
When I came around, Delovoa was next to me looking worried.
“How long was I down for?” I asked.
“Hank!” Delovoa cried. “I-I don’t know. Maybe a couple minutes.”
“Felt like forever.”
“Do you want some water?” he asked, uncertain.
“No, just let me rest.”
Delovoa squatted down next to me.
“This isn’t the first time, is it?”
“How could you tell?”
“You seemed bored.”
CHAPTER 14
Hobardi would have to wait. I didn’t know how to find Two Clem and the evidence pointed to the Olmarr not abducting him. If he even was abducted.
I would have to try and figure out another way to get Hobardi to reverse the Brotherhood Commandment as that was going to become more and more annoying.
Right now, however, protecting the Ank was key.
I put the word out I was looking for a guy with four arms. Belvaille had a lot of people, but four arms were still pretty uncommon in a galaxy full of mutants and aliens.
Found one guy pretty fast, but he was the shape of a blubbery boulder and his four arms were little nubby things. Found a different guy with five arms and a woman with three arms, but I was pretty sure this was a case of close didn’t count.
Delovoa had done more research on 19-10’s armor. All he learned was the manner in which the armor portaled.
A Portal or a-drive could move long distances really fast. Instantaneously.
The Messahn armor could move very short distances very slowly, which was why it hadn’t suddenly dominated the war. It wasn’t all that useful.
Delovoa guessed it actually took the battlesuit longer to reach a spot than it did to walk to that place normally. But the deal was, you could bypass everything in the way and be undetectable, because it was spinning through some parallel dimensions.
Apparently our normal XYZ axes weren’t the only physical dimensions that existed and there were a whole slew of other ones that folded over, into, through each other and on top of ours; which was why it took so long for the armor to move, because it was actually traversing a greater distance and trying not to get lost in the process. Delovoa tried to draw it for me and explain, but the upshot was I couldn’t see 19-10 or shoot him when he was travelling like that, and that was all I needed to know.
Beyond this theory, Delovoa didn’t know much about it. But that gave me a lot. It meant the owner had to have come to Belvaille in a ship. No way someone “walked” through space unless they left a trillion years ago.
Delovoa also said that like an a-drive, 19-10 couldn’t carry anything with him, just the armor—and the owner inside. He had those guns attached to his hands, but those things likely wouldn’t hurt me, so I wasn’t terribly worried about being assassinated.
19-10 must also have some way of seeing where he was going. Otherwise he could accidentally appear inside a wall or floor. So he knew the Ank were in that room, and I was in that room, and it was indeed a planned attack.
I just couldn’t figure out why.
So far no one knew the Ank had been shot. The markets were calm. All the news was about the elections.
What do you gain by shooting an Ank in the thigh? Or three Ank in three thighs? It sounded like the set up for a bad joke.
I was out driving with about thirty Kommilaire when I got word of a disturbance to the west.
We headed out there and stopped well away.
It was a gigantic riot. Or demonstration. Or something. It was the Totki. You could tell because every damn person carried a polearm of some kind.
It was difficult to tell how many there were, but hundreds. I heard from the loudspeakers a news report.
“I’m wondering what the Supreme Kommilaire’s views on this are,” Rendrae said. I heard his voice in stereo and noticed he was standing right next to me pushing the microphone under my nose.
The mob down the street stopped and momentarily quieted.
“Um…” I answered, hearing my voice echo across the city. “So what has happened exactly? I just got here.”
“Su Dival has died. The Totki say he was murdered,” Rendrae stated.
My arms were heavy and I did not normally lift them above my waist unless I had to. So most of the time I stood around with my arms straight down at my sides. But I reached up and put my hand to my face. Even though I couldn’t feel my face and couldn’t feel my hand.
It was just bad, bad news.
Su Dival had been the absolute leader of the Totki. I had rarely spoken with him, but he was basically an older, meaner version of Hong: militant, jingoistic, unreasonable, with an even thicker accent. Now, presumably, Hong was the leader of the Totki. And there were hundreds of them wielding spears on the streets of Belvaille.
This could be it. This could be the catalyst that destroyed the city for good.
I could see them all. They were a few blocks away waiting for my response. I had thirty Stair Boys at my side who couldn’t dream of stopping that many people.
I needed to find a scapegoat and I needed to find one fast.
“I swear as Supreme Kommilaire the responsible parties will be found and executed,” I said as harshly as possible.
About half the Totki cheered that, but I could see the rest weren’t satisfied. They weren’t marching with spears to improve their cardiovascular fitness. They didn’t pour out onto the street for words.
But maybe some words would help. I took the microphone from Rendrae.
“The last time I spoke to Su Dival, I was struck by his commitment to peace. His compassion. The Onyeu people had a symbol called zshu-maen which embodied truth and love and wisdom. Su Dival was those things, he was a zshu-maen,” I said. Just blurting out whatever nonsense I could think of and hoping no one took offense that I basically called him a duck.