A muscle in her cheek twitched. Without another word, she turned and hurried to catch up with Rastra.
We followed him along two more corridors and down a flight of steps to a small and dimly lit office, where we found a grim-faced Juri wearing the uniform and insignia of a midlevel army officer. On the wall behind him was a wide one-way window into a second, better lit room, where two Halkas sat under the watchful eye of a
pair of armed Jurian soldiers. “This is Major
Tas
Busksha,” Rastra said, indicating the officer. “Mr. Frank Compton of Earth, and his assistant Bayta.”
“Mr. Compton,” Busksha growled. “Are these the Halkas you seek?”
I went over to the window and studied the aliens, paying particular attention to the shapes of their ears and the pattern of wrinkles angling upward from the centers of their chins. “I think so, yes.”
“How well do you know them?” Busksha asked.
“As I told
Falc
Rastra, we met for the first time on the Quadrail,” I said. “I trust you didn’t detain them just for me.”
Busksha rumbled in his throat. “Hardly,” he growled. “They were apprehended in the secure baggage area.”
So my suspicions had been right. “Who are they?”
“We don’t know,” Rastra said. “Neither was carrying identification when they were taken. We’re searching for it now.”
“Any idea what they were looking for?”
“An interesting question,” Busksha said, eyeing me closely. “What makes you think they were seeking anything in particular and not merely searching for valuables?”
I shrugged, thinking fast. To me, it was obvious that they were still interested in Bayta and me, and that they’d probably been looking for any secure luggage we might have brought aboard. But saying so would bring more official attention our way than I really wanted. “They don’t seem like your average professional thieves to me, that’s all,” I said.
“They don’t
seem
?” Busksha echoed with an edge of sarcasm. “To
you
?”
“Mr. Compton is a former member of Earth’s Western Alliance Intelligence service,” Rastra said mildly. “His hunches should not be dismissed without consideration.”
The major’s beak snapped. “And what exactly do these hunches tell you?”
I looked back at the Halkas. “They’re well dressed, and their fur shows signs of having been recently scissor-trimmed,” I said. “That puts them at least midlevel on the social scale, possibly a little higher, Do we know how they were traveling?”
“First-class,” Rastra said. “Yet they arrived at the transfer station aboard a third-class shuttle.”
Busksha rumbled in his chest. “Such fraud is the hallmark of thieves and other social outsiders. Why did you inquire of them in the entrypoint area?”
“As I told
Falc
Rastra, I had a brief conversation with them concerning a recreation area in the Halkavisti Empire,” I said. “I wanted to find out where exactly it is.”
“His current position is to search out such places,” Rastra added.
“I see,” Busksha said. For a moment he studied me, then twitched a shrug. “Then let us go and ask them.”
It was typical interrogation technique, I knew: Put supposedly unconnected people together and watch for a reaction. Unfortunately, showing myself to the Halkas and thereby proving I was on to them wouldn’t have been my first choice of action here.
But having come this far, I could hardly back out now. “Thank you,” I said. “Bayta, you stay here with
Falc
Rastra.”
Busksha led the way out the room’s side door and five paces down a short corridor to a similar door in the interrogation room. I watched the Halkas’ flat faces carefully as we went inside, but there were no signs of surprise or recognition that I could detect. “You have a new questioner,” the major said briefly, and gestured me forward.
“Good day,” I said, stepping past him. “You may not remember me, but we met on the Quadrail.”
“We met with no Humans,” one of them said, looking contemptuously up at me. “We do not associate with Humans.”
“You were rather inebriated at the time,” I told him. “You may not remember.”
“I am never so inebriated,” he insisted.
“Nor am I,” the second Halka put in.
But even as he said it, his brow fur creased uncertainly. So this one wasn’t so sure.
“You can account for every minute of your journey aboard the Quadrail?” Busksha asked. Clearly he’d caught the twitch, too. “There are no gaps?”
“Only while we slept,” the first Halka said truculently.
“Or when you sleepwalked?” I suggested. “Because you
did
speak to me outside my compartment door right after we left Yandro.”
The two Halkas exchanged looks. “No,” the first insisted again. “We would never associate with a Human that way.”
“Fine,” I said. “So what were you doing in the secure baggage compartment?”
“You have rights of Jurian prosecution?” the first Halka demanded contemptuously.
“You will answer his question,” Busksha said gruffly. Jurian protocol, I knew, made allowances for this kind of guest questioner, whether the Halkas liked it or not. And the major knew as well as I did that the more irritated the prisoner, the less likely he was to think straight.
The Halka shot a glare at Busksha, then made a visible effort to pull himself together. “We were looking for our luggage,” he said. “I needed to retrieve an item.”
“You couldn’t wait for it to clear customs?” I asked.
“It is
my
luggage,” he insisted.
“It was inside
our
baggage area,” Busksha countered.
“Is our luggage not ours?” the Halka insisted. “Have you a right to keep it from us?”
“While still outside customs?” I asked, frowning. This was about as weak and pathetic a defense as I’d ever heard.
The Halka seemed to realize it, too. “We have rights,” he muttered, his righteous indignation fading away.
“I’m sure you’ll have all you’re entitled to,” I said. “How did you get into the baggage area?”
“It was unlocked,” the second Halka spoke up. Something seemed to flicker across his eyes—“But tell me, Human. How is it
you
come to question us?”
There didn’t seem much choice but to trot out my cover story again. “I wanted some information from you,” I said. “While we were aboard the Quadrail you mentioned a vacation spot in the Halkavisti Empire, a place with outdoor sports, a magnificent view—”
And right in the middle of my sentence, the second Halka reached casually up into his sleeve, pulled out an elaborately decorated knife, and lunged at me.
If I hadn’t so utterly been taken by surprise I might have died right there and then. But the sheer unexpectedness of the attack froze my brain completely, freeing the way for Westali combat reflexes to take over. I twisted sideways, taking a step back with my right foot and scooping my left arm down and forward. My wrist caught the Halka’s forearm, deflecting the blade past my ribs and throwing him off balance. Grabbing his wrist with my right hand, I slashed the heel of my left hand into the crook of his elbow while simultaneously bending his arm back toward his face.
It was a maneuver that should have sent the knife arcing harmlessly over his shoulder as his entire arm went numb. But either I missed the pressure point I’d been aiming for or else someone had redesigned Halkan physiology while I wasn’t looking. The knife stayed gripped in his hand; and with a flash of horror I watched the point zip a shallow cut through the fur of his right cheek.
And suddenly I was in very, very deep trouble. The fact that the Halka had been the aggressor was no longer relevant. I’d been the one to draw blood, and the full weight of Jurian justice protocol was about to come down on top of me.
I let go of the Halka’s arm and stepped away from him. But it was too late. Both guards had drawn their lasers, one of them covering the Halkas, the other bringing his weapon to bear on me.
“
Don’t shoot it
!”
It took me a second to identify the voice as Rastra’s, coming from a speaker in a corner of the interrogation room. The guard hesitated; then, to my relief, he joined his partner in pointing his weapon at the Halkas.
The door burst open and Rastra charged in, Bayta a step behind him. “Are you all right, Mr. Compton?” he asked anxiously. His expression seemed oddly puzzled, as if he couldn’t believe I would do such a thing aboard his station. Shifting his attention to the Halkas, he gestured to the guards. “Take them to the cells,” he ordered. “They are to be charged immediately with theft and assault.”
“What about the Human?” Busksha demanded.
Rastra’s cheek scales crinkled. He knew the protocol on this far better than I did. “He is blameless,” he told the major anyway. “The Halka’s own hand held the knife that drew his blood.”
All things considered, it was a pretty weak loophole. But it was apparently strong enough. Busksha still didn’t look happy, but he touched his fingertips together in a gesture of acceptance. “Very well,” he said. Shifting his glare to the Halkas, he gestured sharply toward the door. “Come.”
For a moment neither of the aliens moved. Then, almost delicately, both of them collapsed onto the deck.
Rastra unfroze first. “Summon the medics,” he snapped as he moved forward and knelt down beside them.
“No need,” I said, staring down at the crumpled aliens as a sickly sweet odor wafted through the room. They were dead, without a mark on them, and with no one having touched either one.
No one, that is, except me.
“The protocol is clear,” Busksha insisted, pacing around the interrogation room like a caged tiger. “He was involved in the death of two sentient beings.”
“The protocol is
not
clear,” Rastra countered. He didn’t look any happier than Busksha, but his voice was firm enough. “We are witnesses to both his actions and the subsequent deaths. There is no evidence that one had anything to do with the other.”
Busksha snorted. “You wish only to save an old friend,” he accused.
“I wish to prevent an unnecessary interstellar incident,” Rastra corrected stiffly.
“Yet we saw him touch one of them.”
“But not the other,” Rastra countered. “Yet both deaths came from the same source.”
“Perhaps,” Busksha growled. “That is for the autopsy to say.”
There was a soft twitter from somewhere, and Rastra pulled a small comm from his vest pocket. “
Falc
Rastra,” he identified himself, stepping off to one of the corners.
“While he’s occupied, perhaps we can focus on the knife for a moment,” I suggested to Busksha. “Do you know yet where they got it?”
“One of the weapons lockboxes in the baggage area,” the major said, frowning at Rastra’s back.
“One of theirs?”
“Neither of them had a claim marker,” he said. “We have not yet determined which lockbox they opened.”
“Or how they opened it, I presume,” I said. “Interesting, isn’t it? First they get past a supposedly secure door, and then into a supposedly secure lockbox.”
“As I said, professional thieves,” Busksha reminded me.
“Or someone fed them the relevant combination numbers.”
He bristled. “Do you challenge the integrity of Jurian workers?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “Some of your workers certainly know the keypad sequence for the room, but they wouldn’t know a private lockbox combination. A more interesting question is why the Halkas would go shopping at all before they’d even passed through customs.”
The edges of the scales around Busksha’s eyes took on a slight purple hue, a color that in a human would probably point to imminent apoplexy. On a Juri, it merely indicated concentration. “The obvious conclusion would be that they intended violence on the station itself,” he said. “But against whom?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bayta stir uneasily. “You’d know better than I whether there’s anyone aboard at the moment worth killing,” I told Busksha.
Busksha’s beak clicked once, very softly. “You mean other than you?”
For all his attitude, Busksha was clearly smarter than he looked. “What makes you think I’m worth killing?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, the bridge of his beak wrinkling. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“I know of nothing I’ve done to these two Halkas to have provoked such an attack,” I told him, choosing my words carefully. “Or to anyone else of the Halkavisti Empire, for that matter.”
“Well and cleverly phrased,” Busksha said. “But not an answer.”
I lifted my hands, palms upward. “I’m sorry, but it’s the best I can do.”
Rastra stepped back to Busksha’s side. “The knife has been identified and claimed,” he said, his voice suddenly strange.
“By whom?” Busksha asked.
“By the same Halkan official who has forbidden an autopsy,” Rastra said. “High Commissioner JhanKla of the Fifth Sector Assembly.” His throat scales reddened. “The Halka whom I am currently escorting.”
“Wait a second,” I said, my mind still two sentences back. “What do you mean, he’s forbidden an autopsy?”
“The knife was stolen from his lockbox and used to attempt a killing,” Rastra said. “This brings shame onto the High Commissioner, which cannot be eradicated until the perpetrators’ bodies have been destroyed by fire.”
“He can’t claim jurisdiction on a Jurian station,” I insisted. “We need to know how those Halkas died.”
“It is true that he has no jurisdictional claim,” Rastra agreed heavily. “But as a Resolver my job is to smooth over conflicts between the Jurian Collective and the Halkavisti Empire. I have already given the order to permit cremation without autopsy.”
“But what about Mr. Compton?” Bayta spoke up. “How can he prove he had nothing to do with their deaths if the bodies aren’t examined?”
“High Commissioner JhanKla informs me that he can explain their deaths, though he will do so only in private,” Rastra told her. “He confirms that Mr. Compton is in no way involved.”
“Yet he drew first blood,” Busksha murmured.
“Yes,” Rastra said reluctantly. “Mr. Compton, did you intend to remain long in the Jurian Collective?”
I knew a cue when I heard it. “We could be moving along at any time,” I assured him.
“Then you shall,” he said. “We travel on the next Quadrail with High Commissioner JhanKla, aboard a private car of the Halkavisti peerage.”
I pricked up my ears at that one. I’d never seen any of the legendary Peerage Quadrail cars, but they were reputed to be rolling versions of the equally legendary Peerage palaces.
They were also definitely not the transport of choice for someone trying to keep a low profile. “The High Commissioner honors me greatly,” I said. “But I must humbly decline.”
“You have no choice,” Rastra said firmly. “I have vouched for your innocence in this matter, and protocol demands that I escort you personally out of Jurian space. Since I travel with the High Commissioner, you and your companion must travel with me. Otherwise, you could be taken into custody at any stop along the way.”
“That seems wrong,” Bayta said, frowning. “Doesn’t that only—”
“Of course it’s wrong,” I interrupted, throwing her a warning look. “I haven’t
done
anything.”
“I understand that,” Rastra said. “But the protocol must be followed.”
“I understand in turn.” I lifted my hands again. “In that case, we accept with gratitude.”
“Good,” Rastra said. “Then let us be off. The High Commissioner awaits us at the Tube. Have you any luggage besides your carrybags?”
“No, we’re ready to go when you are.” I looked at Busksha, who was still glowering at me. “And the sooner,” I added, “the better.”