Bad Penny

(Starspeak)

“[So how’d the devil sleep last night?]”

A full day’s rest later and the jokes had already gotten old. All I wanted to was to get my breakfast in peace. Donnie had other ideas.

“[Shut up,]” I said, trudging my way through the mess.

“[Oh come on, I just want to check in with our satanic leader. What kind of beds do they have in hell?]” he said.

“[You know asking the question doesn’t fool anyone into thinking you don’t already know,]” I mumbled.

Once upon a time that would have stung Donnie enough to buy me the seconds I needed to pull some bread and eggs out of the cabinets. But my least favorite Puppy was enamored with his new favorite chew toy so much that he didn’t even blink.

“[No seriously, which of nine circles gets you the best REM? Or could you sleep at all knowing that an entire alien culture thinks you’re Lucifer?]”

“[…You are having entirely too much fun with this,]” I said.

Donnie shrugged and was about to do his best to launch another early-morning barb, but I made aa show about materializing a pair of earphones and hit a button on my handbook.

Definitely-not-pirated Billy Joel scored my cooking while I warmed up the Jack’s kitchen console. We had liquid protein solution that could be cooked basically like eggs, instant bread made from…some kind of flour we could eat, and honest-to-God Farnata cheese.

Cuisine de alien: egg sandwiches.

Bonus, we’d been gifted a box of the only meat in this hemisphere humans could digest. Sid had tried some last night and reported the fish actually tasted vaguely like bacon.

In minutes, the mess and lounge smelled like breakfast.

Munchkins and aliens began filing in, grabbing sandwiches and ration bars respectively. Only Peudra and Halax didn’t show, already having left earlier in the morning.

Donnie was one of the only people feeling talkative. We were all adjusting slowly.

The first few hours we’d spent under Kraknor’s gravity had felt close to normal. But hours and hours later, that extra fourteen percent wore you down.

We all made sure to get regular exercise—a lot of it even. But we hadn’t set foot on a planet with proper gravity in almost a year.

The first day we’d just walked around the city, taking pictures and talking to locals before coming back to the Jack and collapsing. The second day, we still hadn’t been up for anything more intense. Jordan had done surprisingly well on a radio interview about our abductions, but aside from that, it had been a slow day that still left us all exhausted.

Common Vorak wisdom said we’d pick up a bit more energy our third day on the planet, but who knows if that proved true for different species of alien.

I was just finishing my sandwich when my handbook beeped. Checking it, I saw Peudra was ringing me.

Devising psionic hardware had done so much to solve the privacy tangles that psionics were prone to. No longer could you just pester someone on open psionic channels and force them to listen to you.

Another nice thing about our handbook hardware? Completely hands free operation—if you wanted it.

Personally, I found it satisfying to press a button to reject calls, but this one I took.

they reported.

Good. They’d guaranteed me authorities wouldn’t bother asking for help with anyone who wasn’t a very bad customer, but I’d been peeved when details had stayed outstanding.

Peudra said.

The spaceport was on the south end of the city with plenty of busses and trains going north, but only a few buildings immediately nearby. But the local multi-agency headquarters included those concerned with smuggling and trafficking, so it was only two blocks away from the marina the Jack was parked at.

Being admitted into a government building with virtually no ID check was as amusing as ever, but I actually did have a physical—if temporary—visa in case I needed it.

They directed me to an office on the first floor, so maybe this wasn’t exactly a high security area. Peudra awaited me, but not Halax.

Another Vorak it a plain beige shirt sat at a sleek desk.

“Caleb, thank you for coming. If you would be so kind as to shut the door?”

“Sure, Peudra,” I said slowly.

“Harpe Peudra,” the beige shirt said. “You could at least be polite.”

“I thought you wanted me to handle a fugitive,” I said. “Didn’t realize ‘polite’ was a prerequisite.”

“Play nice, Caleb,” Peudra asked. “This is agent Azi.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, offering a fistbump—a surprisingly formal gesture among Vorak. “Where’s Halax?”

“Harpe Halax is debriefing another matter of the case with my agents,” Azi said.

“Well I’m eager to learn just what this case is,” I said.

Azi traded Peudra a worried glance.

“There’s been a complication,” Peudra admitted.

“Oh, I’m all ears,” I said. “It’s not like I agreed to hunt down someone without knowing who they are or what they did, and it’s not like me or any of my peers might be threatened with military action if we don’t deliver.”

“Huh. You actually managed to understand the whelp’s lip,” Avi muttered in Tarassin. I couldn’t speak the language very well, but I sure could understand it.

I kept my face completely blank though. No need to advertise yet. Though Peudra gave me quite the look from the corner of their eye.

“Let us bring you up to speed before we address the complication,” Peudra said.

Avi slid me a file, while Peudra surreptitiously tossed me a psionic copy—they knew I could go through that version much faster.

I still cracked open the paper file just to verify the contents and show agent Avi that I was, in fact, paying attention.

“The target is Shuma Norshun. Until thirteen months ago, they worked for a Gothagi aerospace firm contracted to build Sky Command— that’s the official hybrid air-spacecraft of the head of state’s office. They cleared all background checks in their employment, and for years performed exemplary work. Their special expertise was in small-arms conflicts and architecture. They built buildings to be easy to defend and impossible to assault.”

I flicked through the background section, noting several redacted sections. Even having the psionic version didn’t undo that censor.

But something was wrong.

“Even if it’s redacted, there should be more listed under the personal background,” I frowned. It was less than a full page.

“That’s because thirteen months ago, a security protocol was changed—I can’t go into details, but somewhere on a computer, a one was changed to a zero, and suddenly Harpe Shuma’s concocted background fell apart.”

I raised an eyebrow. This seemed like legitimately sensitive information.

“Just how concocted?”

“Extremely. We don’t actually know their real name—though we know where they’re from. It just doesn’t matter. It’s a tiny town in the middle of nowhere that’s been abandoned for a decade. Before their training and certification, we have no legitimate record of their existence.”

“Or photos,” I noticed. “What the [hell] do you want me to help with if you don’t have a name or a picture of this rak?”

“We had photos,” Avi explained. “They infiltrated a secure—I’m getting out of order. Two days after the background flag tripped, the response from both the nation’s agency and the contractor was too slow. It was assumed to be a clerical error initially. But in that two day window, Harpe Shuma was very busy. They killed a dozen rak in their homes, all tied to…a certain military project that you cannot know the details of. The short version is, that abandoned town they’re from? It collapsed because of an accident those dozen rak oversaw.”

“Still waiting on the part where you need—or even want—me.”

“Their killing spree was not part of their plan,” Avi explained. “After it was clear their file flag was not in error, it was assumed that they were a foreign agent, conducting national espionage. But that theory has been dismissed. But in the time it took to figure that out, Shuma single-handedly infiltrated…a number of secure data centers. I can’t say how many, but they gained access to the computer backups of every one without setting off alarms.”

“And that’s why you don’t have any photos anymore,” I surmised.

“They deleted the surveillance footage of their workplace specifically, and that of the government building they frequented going back five years. But even worse? We think they might be capable of altering their bone structure.”

That got my attention. As far as I knew, there was only one Vorak who could do that, and they did it exceptionally well. It was a rare, rare trick.

Was agent Avi trying to mislead me? Or were they overestimating the likelihood of that possibility? I doubted they’d met Mirsus.

“What we want from you is assistance in puzzling exactly how they did this in addition to more direct help apprehending them.”

“…You think they pulled it off with psionics somehow,” I realized.

“That is your area of expertise,” Avi said. “We aren’t prepared to give you any more information yet, but Harpe Peudra made it clear that you needed to know who you were going after: one pissed off rak with a grudge.”

“You said the people they killed oversaw an accident? Were they responsible?” I asked.

Agent Avi gave me a hard stare.

“I didn’t sign up to kill someone who doesn’t deserve it,” I said. “If all this person did was kill a dozen multi-murderers, you’re going to find it difficult to convince me to risk myself or my people.”

“Honestly, I’m not clear on those details. My clearance isn’t high enough to know the details of the accident even,” agent Avi admitted. “But the way I understand it, at least two of them had to be directly responsible, but at least three of them couldn’t have been in any way at all. Their background falling apart ruined whatever plan they’d been building, so they went on a spree ahead of schedule.”

“Peudra said there’d been a complication though,” I recalled.

“Yes, my task force believed that we were only a few hours behind them last week. A day or two at the most,” they trailed off. Embarrassed?

“…They believed Harpe Shuma was believed to have retreated to a remote island in secret,” Peudra explained.

“My team controlled the whole atoll, but Shuma was nowhere. We thought we’d finally caught up, but they hadn’t set foot on the island in months. But the raid did revitalize the investigation, and we’ll be ready to intensify our search soon. We’ve had to rely on psionic evidence because Shuma has taken to using them so much. Coordinating dead drops, stealthily calling on contacts…we think they’ve even read the minds of members of our task force.”

“That’s not possible,” I pointed out.

Agent Avi grunted.

“Sten Halax said something similar,”

Oh, he’d gotten a promotion, had he?

“It isn’t,” I reiterated. “Psionics can gain access to other psionics, but they can’t involuntarily rip information out of your mind directly.”

“Well you can elucidate us when the task force is properly reassembled,” agent Avi said. “We’ve been disbanded for the last five months based on lack of progress, but the Shuma case has been reinvigorated because of political pressure. Study the file. I’ve seen your crew’s itinerary, so we won’t call on you for the next two weeks, at least. Possibly three. But expect our call soon.”

“Will do,” I said, snapping the folder shut. “Peudra, do you think Halax would be offended if we left without telling him?”

“It’s…possible, but I cannot see it being a problem…”

“Darn,” I said.

·····

Touring a Vorak opera house the next morning was one of the most unique experiences I’d had in my life, and bonus, I wasn’t feeling the gravity so much.

We had yet to hit a beach as a group, but that was only because every Vorak alive told us we shouldn’t try swimming until we’d acclimated to the gravity more.

Which, fair.

Drowning because you got too tired from existing would be a top five all time embarrassing way to die.

I wasn’t the only one feeling physically improved. So it was time to actually make some progress on our goals. The two Halax knew once upon a time, Macoru and Mavriste, they’d come to town with a whole lot of boats.

There were dozens of marinas stretching up the city coast, some dedicated to spaceships floating on barge platforms, others dedicated to ordinary watercraft. Luckily, their own flotilla was within half-a-mile of where the Jack was parked.

I uttered a silent prayer’s thanks for that. It was totally feasible for us to just rent some hotel rooms if we needed to venture far from the Jack for a day, but I didn’t want to have to learn how to navigate whatever quirks alien hotels had.

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Since we wanted to keep eyes off Nai, she been left behind for this. But Peudra and Halax had made it clear that, despite being friendly, these people were not safe.

So I had Johnny and Donnie along too.

“[So who the devil are these guys?]” Donnie asked. Credit to him, he kept his smirk subtle.

“[Dude], you are never going to master Starspeak if you keep using English whenever you can get away with it,” I said, ignoring his joke.

“You’re just sore because of Lightbringer bag,” he countered, switching to Starspeak just to remind me he could. “[But seriously, who are these rak?]”

“Mmm…they’re actually kinda hard to describe. They’re…mercenaries? But also a charity? They are…” I mulled over Peudra’s briefing. Capturing all the details she’d shared in a succinct package was tricky. “…A religious-adjacent paramilitary humanitarian organization.”

“…What?” Donnie blinked. “[The hell does any of that mean?]”

“You’re gonna have to pick a detail to focus on first,” I admitted.

“Paramilitary?”

“They are apparently very well armed and even better trained. Peudra’s information went back a few years on them, but suffice to say they’ve gotten up to some impressive stuff since their grade school days. They have a pattern of winning some very nasty fights, even when staring down disadvantageous positions, numbers, liabilities…they’re [tough as nails].”

“[Okay…then what about the rest? They’re a charity too?]”

“As far as I understand it, their routine is to find the ugliest conflict, disaster, or crisis in the hemisphere and throw themselves right into the middle of it, giving aid to anyone who asks,” I said. “Peudra wasn’t clear on how they funded themselves or kept afloat, but they’ve been doing it close to ten years now. And like I said—they’re apparently very good at it.”

“[And on top of all that, they’re super religious?]”

“Peudra described them as ‘nondenominational’, so I don’t know about ‘super’. But I especially don’t know enough about Vorak religions to begin to peel apart what more that could mean.”

“[Missionary Marines,]” Johnny said.

“[What?]”

“Paramilitary religious charity,” Johnny clarified. “You could roughly translate that as [missionary marines].”

I tried not to look irritated. The phrase did sum them up well, and I didn’t have a better translation.

“[They might actually have bad news,]” Donnie pointed out. “[If they exclusively go to war-torn regions, then whatever human they found…]”

“I had the same thought,” I admitted. “But I promised Serral I’d take this vacation seriously—err, not seriously, I guess. So I’m not going to worry about it unless I have to.”

“[…Yeah, that’s a fucking lie,]” Donnie snorted.

I rolled my eyes, but let it go.

He was probably right, but really had promised Serral. So I would try.

Our meeting point was yet another spot ripe for photos: a pavilion overlooking the beach just north of the Missionary Marines’ marina.

Of course when three Adepts drifted into my psionic perception, I had to keep a grip on the alarm that welled up in me. We’d brought three Adepts to this meetup too, so I could hardly complain.

It was just…the vibe they gave off was instense.

Part of my mind instantly went to Goldilocks and the Three Bears. One of the Adepts felt underwhelming—but strictly compared to the other two. The second felt like an impressive medium, while the third just blazed to my senses.

Surely Big Bear had to be Mavriste. Did that make Middle Bear Macoru? I thought it would just be one of them for this visit.

Nai and I had done some limited exploration of what Adept capabilities rudimentary psionic skills picked up on. Some Adepts were like Nai, giving off emanations that felt like standing under powerlines made from uranium, while others like Umtane gave off the faintest wisps of ill-defined energy.

Our best guess was that somehow the amount of energy immediately available to the Adept was detectable just by having any old psionic construct in your head. Even Tasser had described sensations he couldn’t fully articulate being around Adepts.

Something about one of them dredged that particular phrase up in my mind. Even without haaving laid eyes on them yet, there was a clear standout among the three. Just feeling them walk toward us made me sweat.

I had to physically bite my tongue to stop myself from popping a candled-radar on the spot.

This was a social call.

Routine.

Low-key trip, I reiterated to myself. Vacation.

Johnny gave a low whistle, the Vorak having drawn close enough for his psionics to react. “You guys feel that?”

Guiltily, I found some reassurance when I saw one of Donnie’s hands tremble. Not just me then.

The three Vorak in question drifted into earshot slightly before rounding the corner to the pavilion.

“—don’t care what your personal history is. That’s not the rule. Just be quiet if you won’t be civil,” one Vorak said—the standout.

“Besides, these humans are from Mummar right? You said the only human you ran into was in Shirao.” The second Vorak’s voice was faint, almost shy.

But the third?

“It’s been a long time,” a familiar voice said. “If I left Shirao, they could too.”

The third voice made the fucking world drop out of my awareness. I’d heard it before. I’d even fought the little-bear Adept before.

Itun.

Just like me, he froze the second he saw me.

Umtane’s face was the first that popped into my mind. He’d been the first Vorak I connected to on any emotional level. His friends and coworkers had been killed out of convenience. An afterthought.

He’d been hurt and outraged, and as much as the Vorak had hurt me then?

That was the first time I’d seen a Vorak, themselves, hurt. I sympathized.

But the faces that made me move was Nemuleki’s. Corphica’s. Wurshken’s.

Letrin’s.

“Caleb—?” Johnny started.

Quick as I was, Itun actually moved too.

“…Oh no—” the Big Bear, Mavriste, breathed.

But I didn’t even hear the words. My maneuvering jets blasted me straight for him, knife already forming in my hand. I was sluggish though. The planet’s gravity keeping me too heavy to jet swiftly.

So something caught my ankle a few inches short of Itun. But before I fell, I shoved more material around my knife, extending it into a proper blade mid-swing.

Itun ducked away, getting off with just a scratch across his cheek and arm. I kicked at whichever Vorak had grabbed my ankle, flaring my jets in all directions to buy myself the room I needed to close the last ground to Itun.

“Vasz terine— err, I’ve misstepped, haven’t I?”

Not a single word reached my ears.

I kicked Mavriste away from me, and jetted for Itun again.

Only for Middle Bear to interpose themselves too.

They splayed a claw, erecting a transparent barrier between us. It was thin like a soap bubble, but touching it was like slamming into steel.

It couldn’t have weighed more than a few grams, but it didn’t budge, even when my whole bodyweight pushed into it.

Kinetic asymmetry, I thought. Had to be.

My brain was on autopilot, seeing the obstacles and recalling exactly what I needed to put Itun down.

Madeline’s comically large machines didn’t always act their weight either. So I knew the weakness of materials like this now.

The only appeared to violate equal and opposite reactions. It cost them energy to create the asymmetric reactions. You could tax those stores rapidly by forcing them to display more asymmetry.

They were also vulnerable in the places they couldn’t be asymmetric.

I materialized a kinetic bomb on Middle Bear’s side of the membrane. Asymmetric shields could never exhibit their asymmetry from all sides. The blast tore through the shield, flattening Middle Bear to the ground.

I was vaguely aware of Johnny and Donnie standing frozen still, unsure.

But my eyes were all on Itun.

Sprinting on sand slowed him down more than me, especially with my jets still functioning in short bursts. I darted laterally around the first ground spike he threw up in my way.

They were slow. Even slower than when I fought him years ago.

It was the beach. You couldn’t push cascades through particulates like sand easily. Too much surface area, not enough contact.

The most cathartic sensation I’d felt in years was my fist crashing into Itun’s jaw.

But before I could land another blow, a silvery black missile flew an inch in front of my face.

I ducked back on reflex, and Mavriste didn’t hesitate to put themselves in that gap.

“Nice to meet you—Caleb Hane I presume?” the Big Bear said, keeping their body between me and Itun. “Call me Mavriste. I think we— shoshikay!”

I wasn’t waiting for anyone, jets on maximum, barely any strategy in my mind. Mavriste was, again, frustratingly quick to react.

They swung a sword at my legs, pulling it from nowhere. But I was quick even without relying on my jets. Dancing backward, I finally found an opening when Mavriste hazarded a thrust for my torso.

Instead of dodging, I caught the blade’s edge in my open hand, levering the blade out of their grip before hurling the sword right at Itun.

Mavriste dematerialized it inches from Itun’s face.

In the last two years I’d pushed my mass limit. I’d ultimately plateaued at something near ‘average’ L1 mass. But I could materialize my whole bodyweight’s worth of mass now.

So a full power kinetic bomb came with some oomph nowadays.

It would have killed an unaugmented Adept, but I could tell just by they moved that Mavriste was not unaugmented.

My blast threw them backwards, but I wasn’t thinking enough. Tunneling onto Itun left me sprawling from my own blast.

Itun didn’t pass up the chance to go for my throat.

I rolled out of the way of his ground spike coming up from beneath me, but he tried to pounce on me with a blade of his own.

Just like Mavriste’s I caught his knife by the edge, preparing to lever his arm with it. But it dematerialized in my hand, reforming in his other.

Before he could plunge it into my chest, I built the precautions I’d normally have taken before a fight broke out: invisible armor.

The blade slammed to a halt a centimeter above my shirt, and Itun stared slack jawed.

God, I hated this scrape. What a perfect way to describe him. Someone so abjectly awful, all you wanted to do was scrape him off your boot.

So I did.

Locking his wrist, I pulled up a leg, crashing my heel into his cheek. The blow took him to the ground, and I rolled up to my feet with it.

It would have taken exactly one thought to kill him. Put a knife in his throat. Drop a kinetic bomb an inch from his nose.

But I was operating on instinct. So when Mavriste and Middle Bear lunged at me from two sides, I didn’t have the one thought to spare.

Middle Bear came at me with a curved blade—easily deflected by my invisible bracers. Mavriste picked empty hands. They didn’t opt for claws though. Closed fists were not how Vorak fought.

I ducked under one jab, only for two more to crash into my helmet. Without my armor, I would have been concussed for sure.

This was no ordinary Vorak.

Middle Bear feinted a thrust with their sword into a tall cut, but even though they were the only one wielding a weapon, they were also the least threatening. I went three-for-three on catching blades with my hands, but they were ready for the trick, dropping the blade and their body in the same motion to tackle me.

Since they were so low, I brought my knee up into their chin, immediately kicking them away so I could properly handle Mavriste.

They were a demon. They moved like no Vorak I’d ever seen, save maybe Stalker all those years ago. Their torso and shoulders wove back and forth, swinging fists from new directions almost faster than I could pivot. The sand didn’t seem to slow them down at all.

Meanwhile I was feeling the gravity slow me with every step.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I was aware I’d made a mistake somewhere. No. Multiple mistakes. Definitely.

But in the middle of a fight, I didn’t have time to reflect.

A psionic exchange transpired between Mavriste and Middle Bear. The latter backed off, interposing themselves between me and Itun again, Mavriste closer to me still.

They were protecting Itun, coordinating their strategy psionically.

Big mistake against me.

I jetted for Mavriste, but only as a feint. They created ground spikes—no, these ones’ points of origin was actually midair. They just grew toward the ground faster than they fell. It was an effort to pin me down, and not one that would succeed.

Throwing myself further still to avoid the air spikes, I wove another kinetic bomb to hit Mavriste. Not enough to accomplish anything, just put them off balance for a split second. A few inches short of hitting them, I materialized a spray of sticky magnetic tar.

This was my opening.

Mavriste would no doubt be able to dispense of the tar given even a second.

But I wasn’t giving them that second.

The same moment my tar spray landed, I detonated a stick of psionic dynamite. Improvised work like it wouldn’t do lasting damage, but it would rock the heads of anyone forced to take the brunt of it.

Mavriste froze and gave me my moment.

I trigged the magnetic properties in the tar, spraying another blast on the ground to pair it with, and Mavriste was pulled down off their feet.

Middle Bear started to recover from my psionic attack far faster than I expected, but still not fast enough.

I jetted right over their head leaping for Itun.

But right when I materialized a knife in my hand, a pink flash enveloped me and lighting struck.

An unseen force blew me of course, my limbs instantly going numb from the jolt of…electricity?

Electricity wasn’t usually bubblegum pink. Or green.

But as I pulled myself up, a fourth Vorak had joined the fray, their arms clad in roiling pink plasma spitting off dark green sparks. I was badly outnumbered now. Worse? This newcomer was giving off every bit as intense vibes as Mavriste.

Two Big Bears.

This must be Macoru.

I had a split second to react when Macoru tossed a flurry of plasma into the air. What seemed like splatters travelling in a lazy arc instantly transformed mid-air into sharp darts that zipped through the air.

I dodged, but they followed me! The pink plasma flachettes curved their paths midair, even correcting back when I tried juking the other way.

On impact, they bit into my armor, melting little holes into it and delivering a shock to my skin that was simultaneously agonizing and numbing. Worse, trying to dodge maneuvered me right into Macoru’s lunge.

But instead of driving their hand through my throat, it stopped short. Mavriste, wearing a plasma cloak of their own—black instead of pink—had caught Macoru’s attack before it could kill me.

The black plasma roiled off Mavriste’s shoulders in waves, melting into black mist, then into nothing. My magnetic tar trick had been eradicated by the black plasma. What the hell was that stuff? What was the pink plasma too?

Oh man, I’m out of my depth. That was the first thing to shock me out of autopilot. Mavriste had protected Itun, Middle Bear, and themselves, all while keeping me from dying.

Forget outnumbered. I was outmatched too. Badly.

They weren’t the only ones with high caliber backup though. And my psionic senses were clearly better than theirs, because I felt Nai’s arrival before they did.

I spun up my superconnector in anticipation.

Nai’s teal flames crashed down, threatening to engulf all three off us.

Macoru and Mavriste darted away, but Nai simply morphed the flames as they fell to avoid me. She crashed down—seemingly from the sky—leaving the two of us standing in the only untouched ground, surrounded by vorpal fire and molten sand on all sides.

“Bit off more than I could chew,” I admitted, offering her a hand.

She took it without a word, and once again ‘I’ became ‘we’.