Murky

Weith reported.

“” Serral asked.

That was surprising. The local hydroelectric plant had glowed under our psionic heatmap, but not very intensely.

Nai stooped over our printout of the colony, scrutinizing it.

“” she asked.

he replied.

Nai pointed out the positions on the map. The condemned firearm plant was less than a mile from the dam.

“” she asked.

Weith said.

“” Serral asked.

Weith replied.

“” Serral said. “”

I stared at the map trying to puzzle out exactly what we were up against.

All the pirates I’d interrogated said one thing in common: the Mak were the ones with humans in their clutches, and the ones saying so had been in Mistina colony on Cammo-Caddo.

None had agreed upon the precise number though. So had we already met them?

We knew we’d contacted someone who at least knew psionics were made by Adepts…but that didn’t preclude the possibility of acquiring psionics from another group.

“So what does this mean?” I asked.

“It means we were right,” Serral said. “Their scout slipped up. They have humans in their custody.”

When Tasser had asked about meeting their psionics’ source, he’d been careful to avoid implying that Adept was a prisoner.

But the person said ‘show you into our territory’. Thus, implying the creator of their psionics was in their territory.

“So…then these are the Mak?” I asked.

Serral wore a grim look on his face.

“…I’m worried they aren’t,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because the Mak have a reputation,” Nerin said, climbing down the ladder into the cargo bay. “For starters, they’re big. They probably have people out here, but it won’t be more than one piece of a very large whole.”

“I didn’t realize you had any experience with them,” Serral said.

It was Nerin’s turn to grimace, not quite finding the words.

“She works in surgery,” Nai said. “She’s seen their work.”

“I knew the group had some presence in Shirao, but we didn’t see much of them on Yawhere,” Serral said.

“If you’re Adept on Lakandt, your most likely cause of death was assault by the Mak or one of the sympathetic gangs in their orbit,” Nerin said. “Some of the patients we’ve gotten came from all over the moon. They don’t care if you’re Farnata or Vorak. They’d gut any Adept they could get close to.”

“Wait, if the Mak are so violent, is it a good thing these people might not be them?” I asked.

“Short term? Yes. Long term…it either means Humans are still in the hands of violent supremacists, or that we don’t know whose hands they’re in at all,” Serral said.

“So what has you thinking they’re not the Mak?” I asked.

“They’re tied up with the city,” he said. “The dam plant is—purportedly—controlled by the city. Now, this is Mistina, so it’s probably corrupt to the sea and back, but that’s sort of the point. If the group we’ve contacted is moving forces to the dam, and it’s not causing an uproar? Then it must be some sort of normal for this gang to visit the dam. The Mak would be more associated with shipping and travel than with local politics or public utilities.”

“Probably a good thing we didn’t try talking to the local authorities then,” I muttered.

“Such as they are,” Serral said humorlessly.

We’d been operating under the half-assumption that the local governor would have too many connections to gangs and pirates. It would have been nice to be surprised though. We could have used the backup.

“So basically, we’re going to be launching from this colony under fire no matter what?” Nerin asked. “Either the gangs will be shooting at us, or the local authorities will be?”

“We could still negotiate for the Humans’ releases,” Tasser said. “It’s not impossible.”

“And yet so unlikely,” Nai said.

We traded strategy for the next hour while Weith finished making his way back to the Jack’s position by the river.

As long as we had time, we went over possibilities, likelihoods, risks. Different members of the crew filtered in and out of the make shift planning center we’d set up in the middle of the cargo bay.

What if they tried denying the presence of humans again? We’d walk away. The most likely explanation for that would be humans had been present but had since died. Awful as it was to admit, corpses weren’t worth our lives or time.

What if they tried to hold humans hostage? We’d stall until nighttime and stage as swift of an assault as possible.

What if this?

What if that?

It was impossible to cover everything.

We did our best.

But sooner rather than later we were spinning our wheels waiting for a call to come in over the frequency and code the elusive Casti had left for us.

Eventually, the radio buzzed.

“Gaji, gaji, respond, respond,” a voice crackled. “Gaji, gaji…munno? Respond, respond… Mo munna—”

The voice went on for a few seconds while we composed ourselves.

“You idiot, they’re from off-world. Use Starspeak,” another voice said.

“I did, I did…respond, respond. You said you were awaiting our call, here it is. Respond, respond, res—”

“We hear you,” Serral cut them off.

“Oh. That was fast. Let me get my—”

The voice faded quickly, so we didn’t hear exactly who they were alerting. I doubted that was a coincidence.

Serral asked. It was directed at all of us, but he looked at me.

I nodded.

The radio crackled back to life.

“My duma says you want to talk,” a heavily accented Casti voice said. “So just who am I talking to?”

“A bank account of…thirty-thousand, liquid in western dun,” Serral said. “Possibly more if you can connect us with who we’re after.”

“…Not an insignificant sum,” the voice said, “but also not how I do business. Names are important, for trust rests upon them.”

“Then you ask for something without giving in return,” Serral said smoothly. “Your duma failed to introduce themselves.”

“My duma know their place. My secrets aren’t theirs to tell. So tell me who I’m talking to before I lose patience.”

Serral was silent for a very calculated moment. The silence dragged on for what seemed like five seconds too many, but I trusted his judgement.

“…We are a Coalition special group investigating psionics and their source,” he said finally, and I understood why he’d paused so much.

He wanted these thugs to think we were lying.

It was a complicated mistruth, because the reason we’d want to represent ourselves as the Coalition is to imply we had support and resources behind us they couldn’t match.

But the truth was, even though we were with the Coalition, we didn’t have those resources.

We also didn’t want these Casti knowing we were with the Coalition, so claiming we were, only to not have the matching support would sell that lie quite well. No lie was as effective as the one seen through.

The advantage to that lie was not yet clear to me, but Serral knew what he was doing.

“I see…my duma said earlier you were after a pirate group,” the voice said. “I trust you know that we are not pirates.”

“We are not law enforcement,” Serral said, not even lying. “We’re following a certain Mak factional group in connection with the spread of psionics. That ‘not insignificant sum’ should buy us access to the Adept or Adepts that forged your psionics.”

“…That seems rather risky,” the voice said. “The Adept in question is…in our custody. I’d be willing to interrogate them for the information you want, but the price needs—”

“I won’t pay a dime for anything that isn’t spoken by someone with firsthand knowledge of our target,” Serral said. “There is a reason I said we’re shopping for ‘access’ not just information. If you’re unwilling to sell that access, we’ll find other leads.”

“…I’m not sure you understand what you’re asking for. Since you have some psionics already, I’m sure you think you know, but the Adepts making psionics are anything but ordinary.”

“I believe I am familiar with the kind of Adept you mean,” Serral said.

“I very much doubt that.”

“They’re the five-fingered kind,” Serral said.

Clever. To anyone that didn’t know about humans, it would sound like he was referring to the Vorak.

“…I see. My apologies then, you are quite informed…but I’m afraid that doesn’t ease my concerns. Quite the opposite in fact. If you know what kind of Adepts you’re looking for and you still opened with thirty-thousand…that bodes poorly to me.”

Serral and I traded glances.

We’d expected this.

Tipping our hand, that we already knew about humans, would put them ill at ease. But we’d come up with a suitable response.

“Corpses are of no value to me,” Serral said. “So if you can’t allow us access to their information, what about access to their health? I’ve been made to understand these folks’ medical situation is precarious at best, and we’re equipped with compatible medicine and expertise.”

“…You wouldn’t be allowed to talk to them,” the voice replied warily. “It would have to be supervised. Heavily.”

“I won’t concede to my people being unprotected,” Serral said. “Especially medical personnel. I would never impugn your trustworthiness, but I wouldn’t even send my best soldier down the street unaccompanied.”

“You want us to allow an armed escort into my territory?”

“You could always bring the people in question to us,” Serral suggested.

“Hah. Very funny, black-coat. No, I’m afraid it’ll be you coming to us.”

“Then it will have to be a proper escort squad,” Serral said. “Seven soldiers to guard my medic.”

“I’ll allow one escort.”

“Five,” Serral countered.

“One,” the Casti reiterated.

“…Very well. One.”

“And fifteen thousand as a deposit,” the voice sneered.

“What about twenty, and the escort is Adept?”

That, more than anything so far, made them pause.

“…Interesting…” they said after a lengthy silence. “Very well. One medic, one Adept, and twenty-thousand dun, cash, and you can inspect their health. The location will be the Sholing river dam, northwest end of the colony.”

“I know it. You choose the place, so we choose the time?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ll get two hours’ warning,” Serral said. “Expect it before the day’s end.”

He shut off the radio without another word. His face was tight. Mine was too.

“…That was great!” Nerin said.

“Seems so,” Shinshay agreed. “So why are we not happy?”

“They agreed too easily,” I said.

“Far too easily,” Serral said. “It’s too even of a trade. They were trying too hard to seem fair, and that makes it all but certain there’s more going on here.”

Weith got back to the Jack a few minutes later and we reviewed our information again.

This local gang—call them the Water Boys for having taken over a dam—were decidedly not the Mak. Worse, they had humans. Or at least firsthand knowledge of them.

So what were we missing?

We didn’t have forever before we’d have to go answer the meeting we’d just set with these ‘Water Boys’. It would be Dyn and Nai doing the actual meeting.

Two Farnata might throw the Casti for a loop.

But still, even with Nai’s skills, committing to something like this while we knew something was afoot…

It didn’t feel right.

Until it clicked for Nai.

“Oh! Oh, oh…I think I know what’s going on,” she said. “And what happens next: we’re about to get a call from the Mak.”

·····

An hour later she was proved right.

a voice rang out.

One of the biggest differences between the default intro-module and our more developed psionics was in ‘under the hood’ access to information.

The default transceiver wouldn’t allow one to dig into any given signal’s metadata, but all ten of our crew were outfitted with the tools to dissect far more information from signals we received.

So even though this message was being broadcast on one of the default five-hundred-twelve channels, it was on a specifically short-range band.

From the first message, we could discern that whoever was contacting us couldn’t be more than five-hundred meters away.

“Caleb, Nai, locate them,” Serral ordered before replying to the call.

I tore my attention away from Serral’s conversation.

“Shinshay!” I said. “Get the signal sweeper. If they aren’t alone, they might also be using radios to talk with other groups.”

“Understood,” they said, going to retrieve it.

Tasser, Nai, and I gathered by the cargo bay’s open door and peeked out.

The Jack was landed on the side of the river, but truth was it was more of a canal. The steep concrete walls of the canal shielded the rest of the colony from ships taking off and landing, and the waterway access made for crowded access to shipping.

Even if our particular landing pad was empty save for us, within five-hundred meters there were easily a thousand Casti.

I didn’t bother reaching out to connect with Nai, instead I reached into my own mind and pulled the pin on one of the radar candles she’d made.

At rest, it was a seemingly inert psionic lump. Something simply designed to persist and stay whole in a mind for as long as possible. But attached to it, there was a switch.

In my mind, it took the form of a pin to be pulled, like a grenade. But in its original creator’s mind, it had been more like a road flare: a certain kind of Farnata ‘candle’ that, once lit, couldn’t be extinguished and would burn down to nothing.

Psionics capable of burning themselves away were interesting enough on their own, but Nai had made a breakthrough by letting them do more than that.

Ever since we’d shoved the radar into her mind, she’d felt bad. The damage we’d done to make that work on short notice was more or less irreparable. Even Coalescing hadn’t enabled us to disassemble it without ruining it.

So, since she couldn’t get it out of her mind, she’d been working and learning to make copies of all its pieces. More accurately, she tried and failed.

But in doing so, she stumbled onto a new possibility.

Tradeoffs and marginal costs existed in every field imaginable, and Nai had found psionics to be no exception. Part of what made the radar hard to disassemble or replicate was its stability. It worked with virtually zero attention dedicated to it, and almost no upkeep. Even Nai, with relatively indelicate psionics skills, could keep in maintained in top condition. For real machinery, that would have meant it had a simple design that easily withstands wear and tear.

But that pattern didn’t carry over to psionic design. The radar was still one of the most convoluted pieces of psionics ever made, second only to the original superconnector.

So Nai had wondered how much of the functionality could be maintained if she gave up on the hope of a perfect replica.

Stability had been the first thing she cast away.

By abandoning stability in the construct, she’d found other functions far more feasible to duplicate. She hadn’t stopped at compromised stability though, she went a step further and engineered specific instability into the design: it would only last a very brief, predetermined duration once it was activated.

But for the brief minutes the candle burned, a convincing recreation of the radar bloomed to life in my mind again. It wouldn’t last long, and it possessed none of the flexibility and customization the original did.

In a pinch, though, it let me see minds far and wide like I once had.

“…Four psionic minds within five-hundred meters,” I noted, flagging their approximate locations for Tasser.

“None have a direct line of sight to us,” Tasser noted. “They’re not trying to shoot us.”

“…It’s that one,” I decided, zeroing in on the mind furthest north. It was sitting right at the edge of the maximum signal radius for the channel they were using.

“Captain, should we try apprehending them?” Nai asked.

“No,” he said. “Stand down and listen.”

the Mak envoy said.

Serral said.

Serral pointed out.

Serral said.

My guess was confirmed right when the mind I’d picked out earlier began moving west away from us.

“…So what the [hell] just happened?” I asked.

“We are being lied to somewhere,” Serral said. “And I cannot tell where. How did you know the Mak would contact us?”

“Because when we were on Sidar, Detective Loen told me a bit about how the Mak operate. He’s investigated multiple cases involving them before, and he’s come across something like this before.”

“So what exactly are they trying to do?” Serral asked.

Nai told us.

And we made a plan.

·····

All other things being equal…

This was a bad plan.

It was risky with an almost certain chance violence would break out.

But it gave us the best odds to walk away with everything we wanted, and we’d kick some supremacist gangs in the teeth while doing it.

But the risks…

“You ready?” I asked.

“As much as I can be,” Nerin replied. “Wait, I should be asking you that. I actually have combat training.”

“Does combat medicine really count? I thought they taught you medicine in combat conditions, not combat itself.”

“It’s…adjacent,” she said nervously.

“Just think of your sister probably being more worried than you,” I said.

Nai and Dyn were approaching the dam right about now, bringing with them a case of human-compatible medicine. If everything went smoothly, then Dyn would examine any humans held by the Water Boys at the dam, and negotiations could unfold further.

We didn’t want to ignore that possibility…but things probably weren’t going to go smoothly.

But that was fine.

We were prepared.

I sent on our hidden channels. “After you.”

I gestured for Nerin to go first through the vine-encrusted fence surrounding the auto-factory hideout.

Yes…this was a supremely bad plan.