I
The Woman on the Bridge
Forbidden land.
Today I walked in the City of Cries, the jewel of the desert. As a girl, I had never seen this glistening city, for I had been born in the ruins beneath it. The elite population of Cries barred my people from coming above ground. No written laws prevented us from entering Cries, only traditions so ancient, their origins had become buried in the unrelenting poverty of my people. Even today, when I walked along a boulevard in Cries as a citizen of the city, I felt like a criminal. All my time in the army, all those years of people calling me Major Bhaajan, all my work in covert ops, followed by my years as a private investigator with an elite clientele—none of it erased the buried voice inside of me that whispered you are a fraud.
Even now, I half expected the police to show up and throw me into prison or back into the slums under the city. Except only they used the word “slum.” We called it the Undercity. Home. It had a beauty they would never understand.
The City of Cries spread around me in spacious avenues and parkland. With its mirrored towers reflecting the sky, the metropolis gleamed like a gem in an otherwise barren desert. The imported greenery that softened its edges depended on extensive irrigation systems only the wealthiest could afford. Across the avenue, a kiosk offered access to the world mesh. No traffic marred the streets; the law forbade ground vehicles. A few flycars cut through the sky, bright slivers against its pale expanse.
Noonday heat beat against my face, prompting my leather jacket to cool my body. It was a perk of my job, that I could afford smart clothes with climate controls. Silence surrounded me. No other people were out. No surprise there; it was noon, the time of daylight sleep. I’d read somewhere that humanity had evolved on a world with a twenty-four-hour day, a place where people slept at night and stayed awake the entire day. I didn’t know. I’d never visited Earth. Here on the world Raylicon, the day lasted eighty hours. Apparently my clients didn’t care about sleep, seeing as they had scheduled this meeting at noon. I had to be at the top of my game today. I had an appointment at the palace.
I expected to meet my contact at the city outskirts, but no one was waiting when I reached the designated spot. Instead, a flycar stood parked where this street blended into the desert. The vehicle glinted in the sunlight, gold and black chrome. Breezes feathered across my face, the air even more parched out here than in the city center. A silver bot no larger than my foot scuttled by, sweeping the path clear of red sand flecked with blue minerals.
As I walked to the flycar, its hatch irised open like the shutter on an old-fashioned camera. I scanned the vehicle using monitors in the tech-mech gauntlets on my wrists. The scan came up clean. I surveyed the shadowed interior, looking for threats. Nothing. Nor did any person wait inside, not even a pilot. Now that I saw the flycar up close, I recognized the craft; it belonged to the Majda family. Right, real personal, have an automated vehicle fetch me to their palace. It didn’t surprise me, though. They kept me on retainer, but none of our interactions changed my unease about working in the shadow of their stratospheric power. Even so. The Majdas ruled the City of Cries, Cries ruled the planet Raylicon, and I lived on Raylicon.
I stepped up into the flycar.
With the House of Majda, power came in a trio, three sisters, all formidable, all different. I found Colonel Lavinda Majda the easiest to deal with, or more accurately, the least nerve-wracking, and I wasn’t one whose nerves were easily wracked. Majda women were impossible to read, towering and impassive, born to power. Many were officers in Imperial Space Command, more commonly called ISC, the combined military forces of the Imperialate. In fact, Vaj Majda, the oldest sister, served as General of the Pharaoh’s Army, which made her a joint commander of ISC. Lavinda, the youngest, had been my contact on the first case I worked for them, when a crime boss in the Undercity kidnapped a Majda prince. The Majdas hired me because of my Undercity origins. I could go places below the desert none of them even knew existed. They feared he had died, and they were damn near right, but I found him in time. For that, they decided I was human after all, despite my humble origins.
In the past year, I had visited the palace several times, and I never lost my awe of the place. Today a man ushered me through the corridors. No one could afford human staff anymore; everyone used robots, which required less investment in terms of pay, food, and housing. Yet here this fellow walked, dressed in black, with a subtle sense of power that made me suspect he too was military. Majdas employed people who looked like them. Hell, even I could be an untamed version of them, with black curls I could never control and dark eyes. A lover had once told me I defined the phrase “wildly gorgeous,” which I think he meant as a compliment, but I gathered he also didn’t think I looked civilized. Majdas were the epitome of civilization.
We followed a hall wide enough for ten people to walk side by side down its gleaming length. Mosaics graced the walls, gold sparkling amid blue and green hues, evoking fish in a pond, here on a world with no surface water. Light filled the hall, though I saw no lamps. In fact, no sign of technology showed anywhere. The palace looked as it must have when it was first built, exquisite, pristine—and ancient. It had been in these mountains almost as long as humans had lived on this world.
The Majda lineage went back millennia, to a time when their power had been second only to the House of Skolia. Led by the Ruby Pharaoh, the Skolias had raised the ancient Ruby Empire, a far-flung civilization that stretched across the stars. It collapsed after only a few centuries. My ancestors plunged into barbarism, and we didn’t regain the stars for millennia. Today, an elected Assembly ruled our people. However, it escaped no one’s attention that we called ourselves the Skolian Imperialate, not the republic of this or the federation of that. The Ruby Dynasty still wielded influence, and after them, the Majdas remained the most powerful House. Today, however, the Majda empire was financial. They had more wealth and influence than the combined governments of entire planets.
My escort never spoke. He left me in a room with vaulted ceilings that created a sense of space. The walls displayed paintings of the Vanished Sea, showing the sun setting over that vast desert, spectacular works of art, yes, but they also accented the death of the world Raylicon, its long dying over the ages. Without our technology to keep it livable, Raylicon would soon become uninhabitable for human life.
The door opened behind me. I turned to greet Lavinda—and found myself facing General Vaj Majda. Her presence dominated the room; at two meters, she was taller even than me. Her hair swept back from her face, accenting her high cheekbones and straight nose. She wore civilian clothes, a black tunic with trousers, but she still looked military, with her upright posture and aura of authority. Although grey dusted the hair at her temples, if I hadn’t known she was more than a century old, I’d have guessed she was in her forties. Those of us born in the Undercity normally had no access to age-delaying nanomeds, but I’d received them in the army. Despite my apparent youth, I was over forty years old. Compared to Vaj Majda, however, I felt like a green kid. She scared the devil out of me.
“General.” I bowed rather than saluted since she wore civilian clothes.
She inclined her head. “Major.”
I wasn’t actually a major anymore; I had retired nearly a decade ago. I preferred army titles, though. I understood military hierarchies, which meant I had less chance of saying something stupid.
The general considered me. Maybe she thought silence would prod me to talk. I had used that trick myself while questioning suspects, but I didn’t see the purpose here. So I waited. I had no idea why she had met me instead of Lavinda. It couldn’t be because Lavinda wasn’t available; she would have sent one of her aides, not her powerful sister. Something was up.
A ping sounded.
The general spoke to the air. “Are you ready?”
A woman answered in a clipped style. “We’re set, ma’am.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Vaj said.
“Set for what?” I asked, too blunt in all this subtle, sophisticated elegance, but the Majdas had known what they were getting when they put me on retainer.
“A client would like your help.” Vaj lifted her hand, indicating a door. “Shall we?”
I went with her, even more uneasy than before.
The general and I walked through the palace gardens, a wild area with blue flowers imported from offworld. A creek gurgled through the grounds, and the forest beyond created a vibrant pocket of life—this on a world with no native trees. Bronzed sunlight streamed over us, rays with an aged quality, a reminder that our world, gilded by its dying sun, had seen its best days long ago.
My client was waiting in the garden. I expected another imposing queen. Instead, I found a small woman with long black hair standing on a delicate bridge that arched across the creek. A shimmerfly floated by her, its wings glistening. Raylicon had no native insects, only tiny reptilian fliers. The law forbade anyone from importing bugs—except, apparently, the Majdas. The woman didn’t seem to notice. She was watching the water, leaning with her elbows on the rail of the bridge. I supposed she was pretty, though I’d never been much of a judge of looks in women. I was excellent, however, at recognizing authority or its lack thereof. To succeed in the army after I clawed my way out of the Undercity, and then to make the almost impossible jump from the enlisted to officer ranks, I’d learned to read people well and fast. This woman seemed innocuous, perhaps a lesser member of the Majda family.
When we reached the base of the bridge, the woman turned to us. I couldn’t tell her background. Although she had the dark hair of Skolian nobility, her skin was lighter, with a quality that seemed almost translucent. She could have been born out of wedlock to a Majda and a commoner. Her ethereal quality set her apart from the other Majdas I’d met. They were many things, but never delicate and pretty. I had no idea what to make of this stranger on the bridge.
The woman spoke in a musical voice. “Major Bhaajan.” She tapped the rail. “Come join me.”
I walked up the span and stood with her, feeling large and clumsy. Gods, I could break her in two, given my height and strength. She gazed at the creek flowing under the bridge, its ripples glinting in the sunlight, the water gurgling, a sound heard nowhere else in this desert. I glanced back to see Vaj Majda still at the base of the bridge, watching us. Something about her posture seemed off, but I couldn’t figure out what. She looked as rigid and as intimidating as ever.
I turned back to the woman, my hand resting on the rail, its tiled surface cool under my palm. Why I felt so uncomfortable, I didn’t know. Well, yes, Vaj Majda always made me uneasy, but she was out of earshot. Then again, given all the biomech augmentation she must have in her body, more even than I carried, she could probably hear every word we spoke here.
“General Majda tells me you are good at what you do,” the woman said. No introduction, no My greetings, pleased to meet you, my name is Whatever the Hell. Right down to business. Good.
“Do you have a job for me?” I asked.
She didn’t answer right away. Definitely a Majda. No matter. I could outwait any of these aristocrats. Up close, her eyes were even more striking, a deep green color, like leaves in a forest. A translucent sheen of sunrise colors overlaid her irises. It could be a deliberate alteration; rich people changed their eye color as often as they changed their shoes. I suspected she didn’t give a whit about fashion, though I couldn’t have said why. She didn’t seem military, either. Maybe she was involved in business, like Corejida Majda, the middle sister, who handled the finances of their empire. Whatever her identity, I wished she’d get to the point.
“Forming a sense of a person takes time,” she said.
Apparently I didn’t hide my impatience as well as I thought. I smiled wryly. “If you’re looking for profound utterances to give you a sense of me, I’m afraid I’ll disappoint. Deep conversation isn’t one of my strong points.”
She laughed, a beautiful sound. “I appreciate straight talk. It is as rare as it is valuable.”
Interesting. In the Undercity, we were always blunt. Hell, we hardly spoke at all. Our terse dialect revealed little. When I joined the army, I had needed to relearn how to talk.
“I would like your help in locating someone,” the woman said.
“Who is it?”
She had an odd look, unsettled, and she didn’t answer right away. I didn’t think she was testing me; she needed to consider her response. I doubted they wanted me to find another missing prince. They only had so many. Although the world had long ago changed, becoming egalitarian for women and men, Majdas followed an ancient and profoundly sexist code. Their men lived in seclusion, seen by no one outside the family. They were the most valuable, best-guarded possessions of the Majda empire. You could be thrown in jail just for trying to glimpse one of their cloistered men and executed for touching a Majda prince.
In my first job for them, I’d brought home one of their sons, Prince Dayjarind Kazair. Dayj had wanted more for his life than seclusion. He ran away and was snatched by an Undercity crime boss, who probably would have sold him if I hadn’t blasted her to smithereens with my pulse revolver. It had taken Dayj nearly dying for his family to accept that he needed his freedom, but incredibly, they finally gave him their blessing to attend university. The other Majda men were living in seclusion, either with a wife or at the Majda palace. Either that, or they were doing whatever the hell they wanted after they defied six thousand years of tradition and left home to live what the rest of us considered a normal life.
“Normal indeed,” the woman murmured. “As normal as a prince of the Majdas can be.”
I froze. I hadn’t said a word. She couldn’t have heard my thought. Yes, Majdas were empaths. Most nobility were, as if they didn’t already have enough freaking advantages. I’d learned to guard my mind, besides which, empaths sensed moods, not thoughts. I strengthened my mental barriers anyway, imagining my mind locked within a fortress. That image spurred my neurons to fire in patterns that would make my mind a blank to her. I hoped.
“Who would you like me to find?” I asked.
She met my gaze. “A killer. She has come to Raylicon.”
“You’re part of the murder investigation?” She didn’t look like a detective, but you never knew.
“Actually,” she said. “I’m the witness.”
That made no sense. A murder witness wouldn’t ask the Majdas to hire me to help her find the killer. No, wait, they might do exactly that if this was within the family, a murder committed by a Majda and witnessed by another family member. Of course they wanted it kept secret. They had their own police force, and its captain liked me about as much as she liked reptilian dung-bugs, but she had to put up with me. I’d found Prince Dayj after her people failed, and the Majdas have long memories.
“I can solve the case discretely,” I assured her. “I’ll need all the details.”
“You’ll have them.” She paused. “It involves a military officer and the Assembly.”
Ho! Had one of the Majda queens murdered an elected official? It could pulverize the uneasy détente between the Ruby Dynasty and our elected government. Should it ever come to a challenge between those two powers, I had no doubt the Majdas would throw their support behind the dynasty. If one of them had committed murder, I could be landing in a royal shit storm.
I spoke carefully. “Who died, and why do you believe it was murder?”
“The victim was a man named Tavan Ganz, an aide to the Assembly Counselor of Finance.” She took a breath. “I believe it is murder because I saw him die.”
Good gods. No wonder she seemed on edge.
I focused my mind, sending a directed thought. Max, are you getting all of this conversation?
Yes, I’m recording, Max thought. He was an EI, or Evolving Intelligence. He “lived” in my wrist gauntlets, his processors embedded in the leather. Bio-threads networked my body, and my gauntlets linked to those threads through sockets in my wrists. Max sent signals along the threads to bio-electrodes in my brain, causing my neurons to fire, which I interpreted as his thoughts.
I used stronger thoughts to communicate with him; otherwise, he couldn’t detect them. Make sure you get everything.
It’s difficult, he answered. Signals designed to disrupt EI activity saturate this area.
Do the best you can. Also, do you recognize this woman?
I have no data on her. Shall I search the interstellar meshes?
Yes, do that. Our exchange barely took a second.
I turned toward the woman. “I’ll need everything you can tell me about the death. Even the smallest details can be significant.”
“You will have it all, just as soon as you have clearance.”
“Clearance for what?” That sounded like a military matter rather than a private one.
She spoke quietly. “The killer is an Imperial Jagernaut Secondary. She shot Tavan Ganz with a jumbler gun keyed to her brain waves.”
I stared at her. That couldn’t be true. Jagernauts were lethal, yes, the most versatile human weapons Imperial Space Command could produce, their bodies enhanced with biotech. They also lived by the most demanding code of honor in the military. They weren’t capable of committing murder, or so ISC claimed, only fighting in service to the Imperialate.
“Ma’am,” I said. “Are you sure it was a murder and not part of a military operation?”
Her gaze never wavered. “Yes, I’m sure it was murder. Tavan Ganz stopped her from reaching the office of the Finance Counselor. That was when she shot him.”
“Where did it happen? And when?”
“At my job, a few days ago.”
So she was in the financial end of the Majda empire. “You work with the Finance Councilor?”
“Partially. I haven’t been at the job long, only a couple of years.” She paused. “Major, I’m sorry. I can’t tell you more unless you have clearance.”
“I understand.” It sounded like a mess.
“Are you willing to take the case?” she asked.
I could refuse. It would weaken my relations with the palace, however. Besides, this case sounded interesting. “I’ll take it.” Remembering myself, I added the expected words of esteem. “I’m gratified by this confidence the House of Majda has shown in my humble abilities.”
“Not so humble, from what I’ve heard.” She smiled easily, with none of the aristocratic edge that characterized the other Majdas. “Thank you, Major. Someone will be in touch with you.”
With that, I was dismissed.
I sat sprawled on the tastefully luxuriant sofa in the tastefully spacious living room of the tastefully exorbitant skyscraper where the Majdas had set me up. It just oozed taste. Despite all that, I loved the place, because the entire wall opposite the sofa consisted of a window. A panorama of the Vanished Sea spread out far below the tower, deep in purple shadows, a spectacular contrast to the red sunset that blazed on the horizon. I’d spent my life underground, denied the surface until my sixteenth birthday, that day I defied the unwritten code of Cries, walked out of the Undercity, and enlisted.
The Majdas let me live in this penthouse in return for my agreeing to stay on Raylicon to work for them. Of course my living in one of their properties made it easier for them to spy on my actions. We played a constant game where I blocked their sensors, they counteracted my blocks, I counteracted their countermeasures, and around and around. In the end, they never could outdo my blocks.
“Max, do your sensors pick up any bugs?” I asked. I preferred to converse aloud, now that we were alone, but I was always careful.
“Nothing.” His voice rose out of my gauntlet comm. “I’ll let you know if I do.”
“I don’t get this job,” I said. “Why hire me? The Jagernaut Forces have their own internal affairs investigators. I can’t see them asking an outsider for help, especially a former army officer. I never had any connection to the J-Forces.”
“Perhaps that’s why. They want a fresh perspective.”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t convinced. “And who the hell is that woman?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t found anything about her on the interstellar meshes.”
Of course she was in the meshes. Everyone was. You couldn’t go off grid anymore, not unless you were some deep undercover agent, and she hardly struck me as the type. Then again, that could make her an effective operative. “You think she’s a spy?”
“No,” Max said. “I saw no indication of military training in her posture, attitude, or anything else about her.”
“That could just mean she’s good at what she does.”
“Maybe.”
So he didn’t believe it, either. I knew he didn’t have genuine emotions, but he had become so good at simulating doubt, I couldn’t tell the difference. “I don’t think she’s a Majda. But why would they associate with someone who is so far off the grid, you can’t even find her picture or name?”
“I don’t know.”
I thought about it.
Oh, shit.
“Max,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Our mystery woman said something odd.”
“She said many odd things. Which one?”
“She’s only been at her job for two years.”
“Why is that odd? Most people have jobs and many are new.”
“Think about it.” I sat up straighter on the couch. “Who got a new job two years ago?”
“Many people. Probably billions.”
“Not people that General Vaj Majda bows to.”
“General Majda didn’t bow to anyone.”
“She might as well have, given the way she was acting. Two years ago, Max.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“No, I’m not.” I got up and started pacing. “Who is the only person with enough power to keep her identity completely off the webs? To keep General Vaj Majda at her beck and call?”
“Having an agreement that the general would stand out of earshot while you talked hardly constitutes beck and call.”
“Seriously?” I stopped pacing. “Vaj Majda was standing like her bodyguard. Two years ago, Max. That’s when Dyhianna Skolia ascended to the throne, after the death of her parents. That woman is the goddamned Ruby Pharaoh.”
I waited for Max to tell me I was wrong. Please tell me I’m wrong.
“Your analysis has merit,” Max said.
“I’m dead,” I muttered.
“It is a great honor.”
“Yeah, until I screw up. Why the blazes do they want me on this?”
“I would venture that they are stumped,” Max answered. “The Majdas recommended you as someone who can work ‘outside the box,’ as you humans say.”
“Maybe.” It made sense in an ominous sort of way.
Beyond my window, the sunset was cooling, filling the desert with the encroaching night. I stood watching its darkening glory. I had to admit, potentially lethal or not, this job intrigued me.