Sharon Lee - Adventures in the Liaden Universe

Up the street, a cab cut across three lanes of traffic, angling in toward her position, the green-and-white Robo Cab logo bright in the daylight. It pulled up in front of her, the door opened and she stepped in.

Mistake.

“Good afternoon, Captain Rolanni,” said the woman pointing the gun at her. “Let’s have lunch.”

The door snapped shut and the cab accelerated into traffic.

It was going to take a bit to disable the camera, but he thought he had a workable notion, there. The hard part was going to be getting out the door. After that, he’d have to deal with the details: scoping out where, exactly, he was, and how, exactly, to get out.

He’d read somewhere that it was the duty of prisoners taken in war to attempt to escape, in order, so he guessed, to make the other side commit more resources to keeping their prisoners where they belonged. It had occurred to him at the time that the efficient answer to that might be to shoot all the troublemakers in hand, and institute a policy of taking no prisoners. On the other hand, Mr. Trogar having erred on the side of prisoner-taking, he supposed there was a certain usefulness to confounding the home guard.

Or, as the Judge was a little too fond of saying, “Let’s throw a rock in the pond and see who we piss off.”

Surprisingly enough, it was lunch, and if there was a guard mounted outside the door of the private parlor, and her host was armed, nobody had gotten around to taking the gun that rode openly on her belt, much less searching her for any hidden surprises she might be carrying.

Lunch was simple—pre-made sandwiches, hand pastries, real coffee, and some local fruit.

To hear her tell it, the host’s name was Sambra Reallen, which was as good as any other name. She professed herself a not-friend of the current chairman, on which point Midj reserved judgment, considering the manner of their meeting. Since she also seemed to hold some interesting information, Midj was willing to listen to her for the space it took to eat a sandwich and savor a couple cups of the real bean.

“You’re here for Korelan Zar,” Sambra Reallen said, and it was disturbing to hear that fact stated so baldly, no “am-I-right?” about it.

There being no use playing games, Midj nodded slowly and sipped her coffee. “Man asked me t o givehim a ride off-world. That against the law?”

The other woman grinned, quick and feral. “At the moment, the law here is the chairman’s whim. Given that—yes, I’m afraid it is.”

“That’s too bad,” Midj said, hoping she sounded at least neutral.

“You could say that,” Sambra Reallen agreed. She wasn’t drinking coffee, and she hadn’t even bothered to look at the sandwich in front of her. “Captain Rolanni, do you have any idea who Korelan Zar is?”

Well, that was a question, now, wasn’t it? Midj shrugged. “Old friend. Called in a favor. I came. That’s how we do things, out where the chairman’s whim counts for spit.”

Another quick grin. “I’ll take that as a long ‘no,’“she said. “Korelan Zar is the High Judge’s courier.”

Midj sipped coffee, considering. She decided that she didn’t really care what the Juntavas had to do with judges or judging, and looked up to meet Sambra Reallen’s sober gaze.

“Kore was a hell of a pilot,” she said, which was nothing but the truth.

The Juntava snorted. “So he was and so he is. He’s also been with the High Judge for twenty Standards—maybe more. The two of them came out of nowhere—the High Judge, he wasn’t a Judge then; the closest we had to Judges were the Enforcers—and that wasn’t close at all. He sold the Justice Department idea to the then-chairman—the chairman that the present whimsical guy we’ve got replaced, you understand. The two of them—Zar and the Judge they set up the whole system, recruited Judges, trained ‘em and set ‘em loose. I don’t know how many Judges there are now—the last number I heard was thirty, but I think that’s low—very low The High Judge isn’t a man who shows you all the cards he’s got in his hand—and Korelan Zar’s just like him.”

It was a fair description of Kore, all things weighed. And the project itself jibed with the one he’d tried to sell her on, sitting across from her in Skeedaddle’s tiny galley, holding her hands so hard she felt the bones grinding together. Bunch of crazy talk, she’d thought then. Now.. Well, say the years had given her a different understanding of what was necessarily crazy.

“Not that I’m disinterested in your problems,” she said now to Sambra Reallen “but I’m not quite grasping what this has to do with me.”

The other woman nodded vigorously. “Thank you, yes. You do need to know what this has to do with you.” She leaned forward, face intent, eyes hard.

“The High Judge, his household, all the Judges I know about and all those I don’t—are gone. Say that they are not blessed with the chairman’s favor. I don’t doubt—I know —that the High Judge had a plan. He must have foreseen—if not the current situation, at least the possibility of the current situation. He would have planned for this. His very disappearance forces me to conclude that he does have a plan, and has only withdrawn for a time to marshal his forces and his allies.”

Midj shrugged. ‘‘So?’’

“So.” Sambra Reallen leaned deliberately back in her chair. “About a month ago, local, the chairman realized the High Judge had not been seen in some while. That the entire network of Judges, asfar as they are known, had slipped through the hands of his seekers. He realized, indeed, that the sole member of the High Judge’s household remaining upon Shaltren was—”

“The courier.” Midj put her cup down, all her attention focused on the other woman.

Sambra Reallen nodded. “Precisely. The word went out that Korelan Zar should be brought to the chairman. How Zar heard of the order, I don’t know, but I’m not surprised that he did. He made a strike for his ship, as I was sure he would, and I waited for him there, hoping to divert him to a safe place. Something must have spooked him; he returned to the High Judge’s house and was taken into custody shortly thereafter.”

“Hm. How ‘bout if it was you spooked him?” Midj asked. “I’m thinking that altruism isn’t exactly your style. What’d you want from Kore in exchange for the safe berth?”

The other woman’s face tightened. “Information! The High Judge must be planning something—I must know what it is! The chairman can’t be allowed to continue—he’s already lost us ground on three significant worlds and will loose Stelubia entirely, if he’s not stopped. All of that would be reason enough, if there weren’t Turtles in the mix, too!”

Midj blinked. “Turtles? Clutch Turtles?”

“There’s another kind?”

“Not that I know of. These would two, and asking after the health of a couple of humans they adopted, am I right?”

Sambra Reallen nodded, sighed.

“Indeed,” she said finally, finding her pastry’s icing a fascinating diversion from the discussion as she weighed some inner necessity.

“These things are too big to be secret,” she continued, “no matter how much any of us wish to hide them. Here you are, fresh in, and already the word is out.

The pilot relaxed slightly, realizing that the Juntava was apparently too focused on her own set of woes to pursue Midj’s familiarity with the doings of the Clutch.

“I’ve been reading history, Captain Rolanni. The vengeance that these two beings may visit upon the entire organization if their petition is mishandled—and there is no possibility that the chairman will not mishandle it—doesn’t bear thinking about. I—Action needs to be taken. But I must know what the High Judge is planning.”