Starbase Human (17 page)

Gomez had never stayed on the ship, and he didn’t intend to, either. Besides, there was absolutely no one out this far to enforce regulations. If someone had to reprimand him for what he did out here on the Frontier, then he was clearly doing something wrong.

He did feel a little uncomfortable bringing Verstraete to
Starbase Human.
As the second in command, she should have remained on the
Stanley
while he went undercover, but she was also the only other person who knew the real reason behind this mission.

He had left Deputy Lera Maa in charge of the
Stanley
. Because he’d only had the ship a short time, he hadn’t really chosen a third in charge. Instead he’d made his deputies work for the position. He was closing in on a choice, though, and if pushed, he would say that Maa was it. She was not just competent, but she put a lot of thought into everything she did.

He felt secure leaving the
Stanley
in her hands for a few days.

He and Verstraete had taken one of the unmarked shuttles to
Starbase Human
. They could change the registration on the shuttle, which didn’t look a lot different from shuttles that traveled from large cargo vessels to starbases with small docking rings.

At the moment, the shuttle’s registration marked it as part of a fleet of ships, all of which moved merchandise from one part of the Frontier to another. The fleet didn’t exist, but he doubted anyone would probe deeply enough to find out.

He and Verstraete were posing as a couple, primarily because it was easier. They also claimed to be on a short vacation from the ship, here on personal business.

The personal business was his. He’d been clear about that from the moment they bought a suite in the starbase’s best hotel. He wanted to talk to anyone who might know what happened thirty-five years ago—the day his father died.

He’d already gone to the base’s “historian,” a kid who knew a lot about the sector, but very little about the history of the starbase itself. Verstraete had talked to a few of the bartenders and a restaurant owner, trying to track down the oldest businesses to see if something had moved from the original
Starbase Human
to this one. But she hadn’t gotten much, either.

Nuuyoma and Verstraete were sitting in the nicest restaurant on the starbase—and the most expensive—sharing a quiet dinner. They hadn’t decided how long they would ask questions, and that was something they needed to decide.

But Nuuyoma wanted food other than the kind he could get on the ship and he didn’t mind using Alliance money to pay for it (even if he had moved it to an untraceable account). He hadn’t eaten well in a long time.

Fortunately, this restaurant wasn’t about the view. There actually was no view; it was in the very center of the starbase. Everyone had to walk around it and its multiple entrances whenever they crossed the middle of the base.

The maître d’ informed them that the upper levels were for established customers, and she implied that those customers paid a premium for that space. She also implied that Nuuyoma and Verstraete would never qualify for that space.

The maître d’ had the same kind of snobbish attitude that so many human employees of upscale restaurants had all over the known universe. They seemed to know that their job was superfluous. It could be done better by an android or a floating menu tray, but the humans were there to show that the restaurant could afford to pay for actual human service, something that so many wealthy people seemed to value for a reason that Nuuyoma never understood.

The snobby maître d’ gave Nuuyoma and Verstraete a table in the very center of the restaurant’s main floor. The table felt uncomfortable, people walking past, wait staff hurrying by. Nuuyoma felt like he was sitting in the middle of the base’s market (unimaginatively called Mercado).

The lack of privacy should have driven him away; it would have driven most people off. But he felt oddly secure here, even having a relatively private conversation. Some of that was because he had spent the last fifteen years on board ships. Privacy was possible, just not something he experienced more than a few times per day.

Both he and Verstraete were tired from asking questions of people who didn’t seem to know what they were talking about. He wanted to relax. He had ordered a dish he rarely saw outside of Earth’s solar system—ogbono soup served with fufu.

Verstraete wrinkled her nose when she saw it; the soup was thick, orange, and lumpy. The fufu didn’t help. He picked pieces out of the fufu, rolled it in his fingers, and dipped it in the soup. The fufu had been made with something that tasted like plantain, although it had been so long since he’d eaten plantain, he wasn’t certain. He was certain that the meat in the ogbono soup, which tasted vaguely like goat, wasn’t goat, nor was it anything he’d ever eaten before.

Still, the soup, with its chili pepper, wild mango nut, and palm oil base, had all the flavors of home.

Verstraete had ordered some kind of dumpling, deep fried and almost colorless. She also ordered fruit, which actually looked better than anything else on her plate; clearly, the fruit had come from some kind of greenhouse or growing unit on the base itself.

“I say we give this two more days,” she said softly.

They were being careful with their conversation, saying nothing that would reveal who they were if someone were listening in, and yet still managing to have a good conversation about the base itself.

“Two days is probably too long.” Nuuyoma was beginning to feel that the base was a waste of time. It was clearly a place for transients.

Maybe the information he’d had about the original base was right: no one had survived the explosions.

Verstraete opened her mouth, then closed it and frowned. “We’re never going to come this far out again,” she said, but she added on their encrypted links,
We traveled months to get here and you want to leave after one day?

“I’m sure there are other places that might have information,” he said, answering both of her points.

“Like what?” she asked, covering her fried dumpling thing with some kind of greenish orange berry he didn’t recognize.

“There are a lot of inhabited moons and resorts near here,” he said. “Maybe someone had evacuated to them.”

She shook her head. “Explosions tend to drive people away.”

“No kidding.” A man pulled a chair over to the table and joined them.

Nuuyoma was about to protest when he took a good look at the man. He was older—maybe ninety, one hundred—but not as old as some humans could get. He seemed athletic and in shape. He was thin, his face a strange ruddy color that seemed to be part of his age.

His hair—what was left of it—was white and gold; his skull, visible through the thinning hair, was covered with age spots. He had aged oddly. He didn’t have a lot of wrinkles, but his skin bulged in some places and looked sunken in others.

He folded his hands on the empty place setting. His hands were big and powerful, but cramped as if he had some kind of affliction. They were also covered with tufts of blond hair.

His gaze met Nuuyoma’s, and Nuuyoma started. The man had eyes so startlingly blue they seemed to look right through him.

Nuuyoma’s breath caught. He activated one of his chips and commanded it to do a facial recognition search. But he doubted he needed it. He could do this search on his own.

The man reminded him of an old version of the clones who had blown up the Moon.

“Forgive me for intruding,” the man said. “I understand you want to know who killed your father.”

What the hell…?
Verstraete sent on their encrypted private link.

Nuuyoma sent the image of the Moon clones back, but didn’t respond verbally. He wanted her to know there seemed to be a connection.

“I’ve always been confused about his death,” Nuuyoma said, letting his voice tremble with a bit of emotion. “I grew up in the Alliance, and there, the maps show that the old starbase still exists.”

The man shrugged. “A mistake. They never corrected the coordinates when this base was built. The bases have the same names, you know.”

Nuuyoma picked up his napkin and wiped off his fingers. He had to be careful as to how he played this.

“I was never really sure what the old starbase was called,” he said. “I found three different names. This base seems to only have one.”

The man smiled. His eyes actually twinkled. He had a charisma so strong that Nuuyoma felt the urge to smile with him.

“This base has many names, but only one in Standard.” The man’s smile widened. “The other names come from non-humans. They hate it here.”

“I thought they weren’t welcome here,” Verstraete said.

The man looked at her. His gaze raked over her, as if he were seeing her for the first time.

“Well, they aren’t,” he said, “but you can’t really bar them. I mean, you can. The starbase is a law unto itself. That’s one of the benefits of existing outside of the Alliance, and in this part of space. But barring them just isn’t practical. So many ships have mixed crews, and then there are the ships that have to dock for medical or emergency reasons. I know that the base has tried to ban all aliens before, and it simply hasn’t worked.”

He spoke calmly, as if the policy didn’t bother him. Maybe it didn’t. It bothered Nuuyoma. But he had grown up in the Alliance, where species mixed and spent a lot of time together.

He valued that about the Alliance.

“Still,” the man said, “the people in charge make it pretty clear that the non-humans are here on suffrage.”

“Are you one of the people in charge?” Verstraete asked.

The man laughed. The sound made the hair stand up on the back of Nuuyoma’s neck. He’d heard that sound countless times before, when he’d been investigating PierLuigi Frémont. Frémont used to laugh a lot, and with great enjoyment. Often, with inappropriate enjoyment.

Nuuyoma took a very shallow but long breath, trying to keep himself calm. He didn’t look at Verstraete, to see if she had had a reaction to that laugh.

She wasn’t as familiar with Frémont, but some aspects of him were hard to miss.

“I’m not in charge of this starbase,” the man said to Verstraete. “I have other interests.”

“You came to talk with me about my father,” Nuuyoma said, bringing the conversation back.

“You say you don’t know what happened to the original
Starbase Human
,” the man said. “You do know that it exploded.”

“I did see footage.” Nuuyoma threaded both horror and sadness into his voice. “The base didn’t just explode. It exploded many times.”

“Killing thousands,” the man said. “They believe no one survived.”

“They?” Verstraete asked.

The man shrugged. “Whomever you ask. No one knows for certain.”

“Do you?” Nuuyoma asked.

“I know that many people died. I heard rumors that a woman survived, but I’ve never tried to verify.” The man leaned back to signal a waiter. One stopped immediately, as if the man were very important. “Pakora.”

Verstraete blinked at him, probably thinking he was giving a command, rather than demanding a snack. Nuuyoma had grown up eating pakora as well, and most of the people he knew in the FSS hadn’t. The menu on the EAFS ships was very limited.

Nuuyoma didn’t know if the man’s order was simply because the food was served here or if he made that particular order just to unnerve Nuuyoma.

The man’s very presence was unnerving Nuuyoma. It didn’t take a food order to do it.

The waiter had nodded and fled, as if he didn’t want to interact with the man. Verstraete’s gaze briefly met Nuuyoma’s. She found the interaction strange as well.

“You make it sound like you do know something about the old base,” Nuuyoma said as the man turned to face him.

“That footage is shocking, isn’t it?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Verstraete said as Nuuyoma added softly, “You have no idea.”

“Oh, I have some.” The man snapped his fingers at another waiter and asked for water with lemon. The waiter glared at him, but said that he would bring it as he hurried past.

“You were on the base, then, when this happened?” Verstraete asked the old man.

Nuuyoma closed a fist beneath the table. He wanted to control the questioning, not have Verstraete do it. Still, he didn’t communicate to her on the links. Too often, people communicating on links paused too long or looked at each other in the wrong way, letting the people
not
on the links know they were being discussed.

“No,” the man said. “But I lost friends there.”

“Friends?” Nuuyoma asked. “Not family?”

The question was a risky one. A lot of clones believed the other clones of the same original were family.

The man tilted his head slightly. He was about to say something when the second waiter set down a tall glass of water, with a bright yellow lemon slice floating on the top of it.

The man slid the glass close, his expression changing slightly, as if he had caught himself before he made an indiscretion.