“I need to talk to Kel Command, please,” Brezan said, remembering his mission.
“We need to process you first.”
There it was: the hint of Shuos obdurateness despite the flowery getup. Still, as a staff officer, Brezan had his share of experience bowing to bureaucratic prerequisites. Shuos procedures tended to be well enforced. Best to go along.
After she’d unhooked him from the medical unit, a process that hurt more than he wanted to admit, the woman said, “Glass of water?”
“Water closet is more like it.”
“One moment. I still have to unspider you.” She didn’t do anything visible, but he bet she had a working augment. “You can move now.” She pointed to a door. “Don’t take too long if you can help it?” Her smile again, winsome. “Someone wants to talk to you.”
Both her friendly demeanor and her vagueness about ‘someone’ made Brezan suspicious. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much he could do but comply. He braced himself and sat up. Pain, yes, but not the slicing pain associated with spider restraints, which he’d experienced years ago as a cadet, in a demonstration.
“Thank you,” Brezan said, and managed not to stumble on the way.
After he emerged, appalled anew at the shakiness of his legs, the woman held out a glass of water. Wordlessly, he accepted it and drained it in several desperate gulps. It didn’t taste of anything in particular, but if they’d wanted to drug or poison him, they could have done so at any point before he regained consciousness.
“All right,” the woman said when he had finished. “Just set that down, a servitor will clear it later. Ready?”
Brezan nodded.
“Even if you are a hawk,” she said, so amiably that he couldn’t take offense, “you’re awfully incurious.”
He smiled unconvincingly back at her.
This didn’t seem to bother her. “Oh well,” she said with a cheer that he was certain was unaffected, “none of my business. Shall we?”
If she didn’t mind his reticence, all the better. They took a lift to another level. Brezan still couldn’t tell whether they were on a moth or a moon or a station, or something else entirely. They didn’t pass any obvious viewports, and the doors were singularly inexpressive. Nine levels down, a walk through corridors barren of other human presence, and finally, an office with its door standing open to receive them.
“Brought the hawk,” the woman said loudly. Brezan almost jumped. “You busy in there, Sfenni, or shall I send him up, or what?”
“Please tell me he’s cleaned up,” a man’s rumbling voice said from within.
“Medical took care of that. I don’t think he’ll expire messily during the interview.”
“Excellent,” Sfenni said in a tone implying the opposite.
“In you go,” the woman said, and pivoted on her heel without waiting for Brezan to walk into Sfenni’s office. Granted, there had to be a hidden security team scrutinizing his every move, but Brezan couldn’t help feeling offended at being counted so small a threat, even if the Kel and Shuos were nominally allies.
Brezan squared his shoulders, wondered if he should adjust his uniform, then decided that medium formal was good enough. He stepped in.
The first thing Brezan noticed about the office was the shelves. It wasn’t so much that they were finely made, although he couldn’t help wondering if that was genuine cloudwood, all shimmering gray with subtle pearly swirls, or one of the better facsimiles. The shelves were crammed with books. Not just books, either. They looked hand-bound, and the smells of aged paper and glue almost overwhelmed him.
Shuos Sfenni sat at a much less expensive-looking desk overshadowed by all those shelves. He had an incongruously round, soft face atop a boxer’s blockish frame. For all Brezan knew, he whiled away his time between alphabetizing tomes and dealing with inconvenient Kel by pummeling unlucky bears. At least, unlike the tasseled woman, Sfenni wore a proper Shuos uniform.
“Have a seat,” Sfenni said, indicating the chair on the other side of the desk. “So. Colonel Brezan, is it?”
“Yes,” Brezan said, and waited.
“I’m substituting for Shuos Oyan, who would ordinarily be processing you,” Sfenni said, “so you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little slow. We intercepted your, ah, request to talk to the hexarch’s personal assistant.”
“Yes,” Brezan said, more cautiously this time. Granted, he hadn’t expected it to be easy to get to a secured terminal, but he didn’t like where this was going.
Sfenni not-smiled at him. “Let me summarize what we fished out of that pile of reports.”
The high language didn’t inflect for number, but ‘pile’ was pretty unambiguous. Just how many hand-offs was Brezan dealing with? His stomach clenched.
Sfenni’s summation was, thankfully, accurate as far as it went. After he had finished, he scrutinized Brezan and sighed. “Enough games, Colonel. Tell me why you’re really here.”
What does he mean, ‘really’—”I don’t know how to verify my identity or rank if you haven’t been able to get the necessary information from the Kel,” Brezan said, “but I assure you that my need to contact my superiors is urgent and then I’ll be out of your hair. I apologize for involving the Shuos. Circumstances made that seem like the best way forward.” More like he had been muzzy from sleeper-sickness, but no need to spell that out. He didn’t know how much more was safe to say, no way of telling what Sfenni’s security clearance was. For that matter, even if Sfenni let him access a terminal, there was no guarantee it would be secured. Still, one problem at a time.
Sfenni reached into a drawer. Brezan tensed, but all Sfenni did was retrieve a pill dispenser and dry-swallow one of the bright green capsules. “All right, look,” Sfenni said after a painful-sounding coughing fit. “Can we level with each other, Colonel? You’re in holding on Minner Station”—Where? Brezan wondered—“and this is the most boring place in the march, for all that it’s become very exciting lately. The thing is, some of us appreciate boredom.”
Brezan knew where this was heading.
“So here’s the thing, Colonel. I understand that you hit the ceiling of your career”—Brezan bristled, but Sfenni didn’t pause—“and you’d like to be seconded to the Shuos or retire to some nice planetary city and dabble in energy market intelligence or whatever the fuck. But Shuos Zehun is known for being unforgiving when people waste their time. Things around here could get very uncomfortable, and some of us like our comforts.”
If Sfenni said ‘some of us’ with that particular greasy inflection again, Brezan was going to throttle him. “I don’t care about your philosophy of life,” he said, and Sfenni’s eyes became moistly reproachful. “Would you get to the fucking point already?”
“Well,” Sfenni said, “inconveniences are inconveniences, you know.”
Then, to Brezan’s massive irritation (that note in his profile about anger management was never going away at this rate, but this one time surely he was justified?), Sfenni got up and trundled over to a decorous cloudwood-or-next-best-thing cabinet. “What’s your poison?” he said.
Oh, for—Brezan bit down on what he’d been about to say. Sure, he shouldn’t be randomly getting drunk, but if it got this loser to get him to that fucking terminal, why not. It couldn’t make the inside of his mouth taste any worse than it did anyway. “Peach brandy,” he said. He despised peach brandy, but it was the most expensive drink he could see from where he was sitting.
Sfenni pulled out a decanter, then two snifters. “Sorry, my collection of brandies is atrocious,” he said, as if Brezan cared, “but my supply has dried up of late.” With fussy courtesy, he poured for them both.