“They don’t like to travel,” I said.
“Stay-at-home types, huh?”
“Not just stay-at-home, but stay-by-themselves. They have little interest in interspecies diplomacy. Most never even learn to speak Mercantile. The ones we lived with were considered peculiar for wanting to settle alongside human beings, and even they had trouble learning a tongue other than their own. The race doesn’t retain the ability to learn additional languages much past puberty, and are pretty bad at learning offworld languages at any age. If you ever get around to interrogating these two, you might need to find yourself a translator.”
“Annnnh, that’s going to be a headache.” He tented his fingertips. “But the point is, these two weren’t just random tourists just passing through this station who saw the famous war criminal by chance and decided, on the spur of the moment, to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime coincidence and do the patriotic thing.”
“I would assume not.”
“They were waiting for you.”
“Looks that way.”
He let the moment linger. “I don’t like you, Counselor.”
I shrugged. “I don’t particularly care.”
He glanced at the disk the Porrinyards had taken off the first Bocaian, which was now floating in a levitation field, safe from any clumsy hands capable of accidentally activating it. “Got any idea what this is?”
Oscin spoke alone. “It’s called a” (insert noise that sounded like a pair of Tchi suffering from joint digestive disturbance). “Mercantile translation: Claw of God. It’s a K’cenhowten weapon invented almost sixteen millennia ago. The oppressive theocracy in power at the time used it for the ceremonial execution of heretics. I wouldn’t have recognized it myself, were it not for a short tour of duty to our embassy at a K’cenhowten holding where one was kept on display. Prior to this I would have assumed no working models existed outside of museums and private collections.”
For some reason the Porrinyards assigned the punchline to Skye. “They’re very valuable.”
“That’s good to hear,” I said. “The day I’m successfully assassinated, I don’t want anybody to say I cost pennies.”
Skye said, “Little chance of that here. There were never more than a hundred Claws of God in existence. There are supposed to be less than twenty still extant. I suppose we’ll need to contact the experts and get the precise numbers, to see if we can trace this one’s provenance.”
“Is that even necessary?” Pescziuwicz asked. “It’s just a machine, like any other machine. My bosses could figure out the basic specs in half an hour. What’s to stop anybody from building one today?”
Oscin took over. “In practical terms, nothing. But determining the authenticity of this one seems a natural first step.”
“Why?”
“If a genuine antiquity, it’s worth considerably more than the bounty on Counselor’s head. The sponsors of these assassins would be losing money on the deal. If a contemporary artifact, then somebody’s gone to an equal amount of trouble duplicating an obscure weapon for, we can assume, symbolic reasons. Either way, determining its age would help us determine what the assassins were thinking…or what kind of resources their employers, if any, brought to the table.”
Under the circumstances, I knew I’d regret asking the next question. “What would it have done to me?”
Skye’s softer voice matched Oscin’s measured cadence. “Once activated in close quarters, it produces an intense localized harmonic capable of liquefying an enemy’s organs without disturbing the skin. Your brain would have remained functional over the next four minutes or so, or however long it took your entire digestive system to seep out your bladder and anus.”
This was nasty even by the standards of our present hosts. Bettelhine factories had produced poisons and bombs and energy weapons capable of sterilizing entire planetary hemispheres, but the Claw was horror on a smaller scale, nasty even to the employees of an enterprise whose products had so often set new standards of genocidal efficiency. The Claw did not sound like something they would have built. It was too…intimate.
The room fell silent long enough for me and Pescziuwicz to enjoy all the appetizing sights and sounds conjured by our respective imaginations.
I said, “It does sound like an efficient way to lose weight.”
Pescziuwicz’s head swiveled. “Am I supposed to be amused?”
“No, sir.”
“Let me count the reasons I’m not.” Pescziuwicz ticked off points on his fingertips. “First, a Dip Corps priority transport arrives at my station without any advance word. Which is fine; the Big Man has his fingers in a lot of pies, and he’s under no obligation to keep me apprised of everything. It’s just one of the many things that keeps my job interesting. But second, the dignitary aboard turns out to carry her own personal set of concentric red circles tattooed on her back. That’s a little bit less than fine. Not that drawing moral judgments is within my job description, but I would have liked to know that there could be safety concerns aboard my station. Still, I’ll let that one pass. I’ll also overlook this pair of mynah birds you have working for you; I don’t even wanna know what their story is. We get to third. You’re an honored guest, which means this little errand of yours is bigger than I even wanna think about, and nobody ever got around to tell me that it came with her own personal security issue. Fourth. These suckers who don’t travel were here waiting for you, at the precise time of your arrival, armed with some obscure K’cenhowten gizmo from sixteen thousand years ago, a weapon that’s almost impossible to obtain, a weapon that even if new indicates that somebody’s gone fanatic somewhere. That’s so far from Fine that it leaves Fine back home with the goldfish, because any reasonable respect for the logistics of this particular assassination attempt assures that the not-inconsiderable process of getting all of those pieces into position had to be well under way by the time you three even boarded your transport back on New London. Put that all together, in one portable package with a pretty red bow, and I can only note that we’ve just seen a security breach of pretty fucking historical proportions.”
I remained calm. “Yes, but whose?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My Dip Corps liaison, Artis Bringen, passed Mr. Bettelhine’s invitation on to me within an hour of receiving it himself. My associates and I departed New London within twelve hours of that. We’ve spent most of the months since then in bluegel, with our drive set to full acceleration. Any conspiracy against my life originating from a security breach at New London, or from anywhere else outside this system, would have had to find out about my itinerary, made its own travel arrangements, depart, and then somehow beat me here in time to spring the trap with Claw of God in hand, an accomplishment that depends on so many nested miracles that we can assume the security breach, and the provision of that Claw, took place here, at some point between Mr. Bettelhine’s decision to invite me and that invitation being sent to my associates back home.”
That shut him down. “That’s it? Good night and good luck?”
“I’m afraid it has to be, sir. My companions and I are here for a specific purpose, involving the interests of your employer, Hans Bettelhine. We have traveled a great distance to be here, at his personal request, and we need to hurry down to Xana and begin addressing his issues right away. We do not have the time, or the resources, to devote full attention to the investigation into this matter. But your own duties do include working with Bettelhine and Confederate law enforcement to gather data on the activities of individuals who would engage in criminal activity aboard this station. So we might as well get out of your way so you can get started.”