Profiteer

“That’s what I’m here to find out. Whether or not you’re what we’re looking for.” Listen to yourself. You don’t even approve of the project. Zanzibar put those thoughts aside. Her job right now was finding someone who knew the ins and outs of that ship in the GA&A landing quad. She wasn’t here to second-guess. Not herself, not her duty. “We need someone with extensive knowledge of systems, mechanics, weaponry, etcetera, of Paralian-designed ships. We need someone who knows everything about a particular ship design, including the classified particulars and Confederacy in-house modifications.”

 

It made an imitation of a human nod, which amounted to a bobbing of the head on the end of its long neck. “It is right for you to be skeptical.”

 

“Forgive me if I have my doubts.”

 

“Shall I explain myself?” Zanzibar wondered how it talked. The serrated beak was rigid, and barely opened when it spoke. The few glimpses Zanzibar got inside its mouth showed an intricate palate made of ridged holes and muscular flaps. Flower seemed to have at least three tongues.

 

Zanzibar thought it looked like someone playing a flute from the inside.

 

“Go ahead,” she said.

 

“I have resided within the Terran Confederacy for thirty standard years. Many Diplomatic Envoys owned me as an Imperial Military Observer for twenty-three of those years.”

 

Zanzibar felt a half-smile reach the corner of her mouth. “You were a spy?”

 

“I was an Observer. One of the Emperor’s hands picks the academies for scholars to be its ears. I was one of those ears, and my observations were of the Confederacy military.”

 

“So you’re no longer an Observer?”

 

“My term of service to the Emperor ended himself. I still study human warfare, but only for my own ears.”

 

“Quite a hobby.”

 

Flower made a circular gesture with its free foot. Zanzibar interpreted it as a shrug. “I was studying the topic even when I was male. If I return to the Empire, I return to my academy. I do not because an alien culture provides more interest than my own. Bakunin allows me to have a free hand in my studies. Freer than when I was an extension of the Emperor’s hand.”

 

“I see. So you do know the kind of information we need?”

 

“You require information the Kalcthwee’rat provides me.” it was the first time Zanzibar had heard a native Paralian term pronounced with anything approaching authenticity “The Kalcthwee’rat translates himself as Blood-Tide. He is a Paralian-designed, Confederacy-built drop-ship. He modifies on the Barracuda class-five troop-carrier. He sizes between the Manta fighter and the Hammerhead light bomber. He moves in tach-space, in-system, and can maneuver atmospheric with and without contragrav assistance. The Barracuda design was originally—”

 

“Okay,” Zanzibar said, holding up her hand. “Has Mr. Levy informed you of what we need you for?”

 

“Not in any detail. I do know that you are offering me a chance to observe firsthand a human military operation. I would find such an experience invaluable even if no payment was offered.”

 

I’ll be damned, Zanzibar thought, a thrill-seeking alien.

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 

Family Values

 

 

“There is no aspect of politics that was not first invented within the confines of a human family.”

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

 

“If Absolute Sovereignty be not necessary in a State, how come it to be so in a family?”

—Mary Astell

(1666-1731)

 

 

Tetsami thought that the name, the Stemmer Facility, sounded more like a factory than a hospital. From the outside, it looked like a factory. The whole building was a one-piece blank-gray truncated pyramid that was typical of the bunkerlike architecture infecting most of Godwin. It had no windows, a shortage of surface access, and no external indication that it was a hospital, and one far removed from the biological chop-shops she’d known back in the old days.

 

Tetsami snorted. All of her previous life was now the “old days.” She disliked the fact that she was waxing nostalgic about her years as one of the best freelance hackers in the Godwin corporate shithole.

 

There was a reason. In those eight years she’d never been involved in this kind of shitstorm. Because of the way her parents died, she’d shunned any sort of corporate identity—no matter what it cost her in potential kilograms—to avoid being targeted in the dirty little wars that constantly rippled through the sea of Bakunin economics. Now she was stuck in the middle of a whole flood of the same shit that’d killed them.

 

No wonder she was pining for the “good old days.”

 

Days when the only laser she’d deal with would be piped through an optical datalink.