June 14, Year 214 NPrE[1]
Al-Haiyan, the capital of the Sultanate of Er-Rummal's colonies on Tar-Mariat
Gemma Nightbird waited for them in the middle of the sun-drenched lobby of the perinatal center. Through the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, she saw passersby who glanced in surprise at the locked doors — some Haiyani even stopped and tried to ask the guards what was going on.
Usually, the center operated without weekends, from seven in the morning until eleven at night, and the hospital even worked around the clock — the center had its own fleet of ambulances that went out to pregnant women, women in labor, and infants at any time of day. But right now, the vehicles stood behind the locked gates of the parking lot, the center's doors were closed, and the guard detail in front of them had been increased to six instead of two.
The spacious lobby was empty. All staff had been ordered to stay in their offices and silently stare at switched-off monitors — any conversation was forbidden. Gemma had made sure no one brought any personal phones, tablets, laptops, or even watches, headphones, and other small gadgets into the building. All exits except the main one were blocked, all staff access cards too — they could only enter or exit with the knowledge of the Security Service. Of which Gemma Nightbird remained the sole administrator.
The receptionist at the front desk gave Gemma a pointed look, and she realized she was nervously fiddling with her bracelet with tribal patterns. Nightbird hid her hands in her pockets, cursing the day and hour she'd decided to take Fahti as her foreign language in college. It was precisely because of this that she'd been assigned to a perinatal center in a colony of the Sultanate of Er-Rummal, and what had seemed like an excellent career move was now on the verge of turning into a complete professional collapse.
She suppressed the urge to call Eric. She was an adult, accomplished, thirty-year-old woman; she shouldn't whine to her husband at the first sign of work trouble!
"Trouble," Gemma swallowed. She didn't even know if she'd be put on trial for everything that had happened. Though what the hell, she was just a Security Service administrator!
Although, right now, she was in charge here, and if things continued as they had been, the next twenty years would have Eric bringing her care packages in prison, and they'd only be able to look at each other through a force field.
A black car with tinted windows slowed in front of the center and, after a pause, turned into the visitor parking lot. The parking lot was, of course, also closed, but the gates swung open immediately for this car.
Nightbird clenched her fists in her pockets. "The Sultan of Er-Rummal will send his people to sort this out," her boss had told her; those were the last words she heard from him. "Try not to disappoint them."
The driver's side door opened. A very tall, very large man of such powerful build that Gemma would have thought he was a stream-trooper if she hadn't seen his documents, got out of the car. The blue passport of a human was issued in the name of Murad ibn-Rufin Al-Fayyaz, Yakzan to His Highness Wad-Prince[2] AlNilam.
A Yakzan, as Gemma understood after a quick study of Galactopedia, was something like a confidant, bodyguard, and servant all in one. Nightbird would have preferred to deal with someone from the current millennium, but who cared about her opinion, especially in a situation like this.
Al-Fayyaz opened the passenger door, offered a hand to the prince, and Gemma clicked her tongue in irritation. These Haiyani had mixed things up again! It wasn't a prince who emerged from the car, but a princess — a woman much shorter than Gemma, swathed from head to toe in traditional Fahti garments: something between a robe and a dress, and a headscarf hiding her hair and face.
"Religious fanatic," Nightbird thought sourly. She also wore clothes with tribal patterns, jewelry, kept sacred Omo objects at home — but, like all normal people, it was just a tribute to her ancestors. It never occurred to her to come to work in chow and sagranda studded with feathers and throw a wolf pelt on top!
Wad-Princess AlNilam (no other name was listed in the passport), accompanied by the Yakzan who carried a small case, headed for the center's doors. Gemma touched her earpiece and ordered the shift supervisor:
"Let the guests in. And bow, she's a representative of the royal family."
"Yes, ma'am," the supervisor replied discontentedly.
"Easy, Mark. It's the custom here, and we respect the customs of Er-Rummal."
"Especially now," Gemma added to herself. Khalida, the receptionist, was local, so without prompting she came out from behind the desk and, when the princess crossed the center's threshold, knelt before her. Her Highness granted the girl permission to rise with a gracious gesture, and she backed away to the registration desk. Turning one's back to persons of royal blood was not allowed, nor was speaking to them without their permission.
"This will be an interesting conversation if Madame doesn't deign to," Nightbird snorted. She took three steps towards the Wad-Princess, placed a hand over her chest, and bowed. Since Gemma was not a subject of the Sultan, she didn't need to fall to her knees.
Though she wouldn't have anyway.
"Good afternoon," said Her Highness. Her voice had a very strange timbre — too low for a woman, but quite soft and melodious. "Umm... Ms. Lee Min-ho? Head of the Security Service?"
"No," Gemma answered dryly. "He was recalled to Almonzis."
"Then his deputy..."
"Both deputies were also recalled."
The princess's brows rose in puzzlement:
"Then who are you?"
"Gemma Nightbird. Security Service administrator."
"Nightbird?" Her Highness's glance slid to Gemma's bracelet. Al-Fayyaz also stared at her with the interest reserved for a living exhibit in an ethnographic museum.
"I'm from the Chokon tribe," said Gemma.
"Oh! How should I address you?" AlNilam asked, surprisingly politely.
"As you find convenient, Your Highness. Ma'am or Gemma is fine."
"Good, Gemma. Take us to whoever remains in charge of the Security Service."
"That would be me," Nightbird admitted with a sigh. The Wad-Princess frowned and exchanged a glance with her bodyguard. He moved his lips strangely, as if silently uttering a few words. Her Highness pensively tilted her head to the side, looking at Gemma, who was starting to get irritated — she couldn't decipher the expression in her gaze because she couldn't see the princess's face. A light-grey silk headscarf covered it so that only thick black eyebrows, a million long lashes, and large, almond-shaped eyes — bright green, like a cat's — were visible. And that was all. The passport photo was the same.
"How are her own subjects supposed to recognize her, I wonder? By the bodyguard?" Nightbird thought angrily.
"Very well," Her Highness finally said. "Take us to the center director's office and arrange for the surveillance cameras there to be disabled."
Gemma flushed with indignation — the princess was giving her orders as if she were her maid! Didn't even doubt that Gemma would rush to obey, even though she worked for the Corporation, not the princess's daddy! But the situation wasn't one for kicking up a fuss and showing temper, so Nightbird forced out through clenched teeth:
"Of course, Your Highness. This way, the elevator is here," and took her work phone from her right pocket to call the surveillance room. Her personal one was in her left — she deserved some privileges, right, since they'd left her alone here to be devoured by the Sultan's agents?
They rode in silence in the elevator, its size thankfully allowing Gemma to maintain a proper distance from the Wad-Princess, but the Yakzan still positioned himself between them. Al-Fayyaz wore a short, neatly trimmed beard, a lush mustache, and sideburns — like most Haiyani. Eric also had urges to grow facial bushes to blend in with the crowd, but Gemma had imposed a strict veto on that idea. Her husband was so red-haired that among the Haiyani he looked like a flaming phoenix among crows anyway.
Besides, no beard would have helped them blend in — Gemma was the epitome of exoticism to the locals: tall, slender, with bronze-tanned skin, smooth black hair, high cheekbones, and a Chokon profile. People still turned to look at her on the streets, and once, when she and Eric were peacefully eating ice cream in the park, a little girl came up and shyly asked, "Auntie, are you a witch?"
Even then, Gemma had a suspicion that accepting the assignment to Al-Haiyan had been a mistake. Who could have known it would be this big...
The office of the vanished director of the perinatal center was on the penultimate floor, in the turret that the staff called "the eagle's nest." Nightbird opened the doors for the princess and let her and the Yakzan enter first. AlNilam walked in, swept the expanse of the office with a quick, keen glance, and settled into the director's chair. Al-Fayyaz stood at her right hand, and both stared at Gemma again, who suddenly felt like a schoolgirl in the principal's office.
"Have a seat," Her Highness graciously permitted. Nightbird perched on the edge of a chair. "So, as I understand, the problem is that someone has stolen ten recombined embryos from your center, a number of internal documents, and the center's director and both his deputies have vanished without a trace."
Gemma swallowed. Somehow, in the princess's telling, what had seemed like just a catastrophe now seemed like an absolute apocalypse.
"Five embryos," Nightbird mumbled, just to say something. "Five recombined and five awaiting recombination."
"When did you discover this?"
"The day... the day before yesterday. June 12th, in the morning. Around half past five, when the morning shift staff were preparing to open."
"What actions did you take?"
Gemma licked her lips.
"I'm afraid I can't... I can't answer that question, as it's outside my competence. That was handled personally by Lee Min-ho, the head of our SS."
The princess exchanged another glance with her bodyguard. He snorted quietly into his mustache and moved his lips.
"Sad, but true," AlNilam agreed with him. "What were your duties, Gemma?"
"I'm the SS administrator. I assign staff to shifts, ensure they show up for duty, keep track of working hours, sick leave, vacations, time off. Well, in short, I organize the daily work of the SS."
"And now all the bosses have run off and left you to clean up a mess you know nothing about."
Gemma flushed. Okay, she wasn't a former stream-trooper or an Epsilon, not the head of the SS or even a deputy, but what the hell?! The Sultan sent some religious fanatic in silk rags and a bearded bruiser instead of agents! Gemma at least graduated college in her field and had already worked eight years in the SS system at perinatal centers, and what could this one do besides fluttering her eyelashes and waving a rosary?!
"Have you informed the parents that their future children are missing?"
Gemma's anger evaporated instantly. For some reason, she hadn't even thought about that.
"I... umm... that was supposed to be handled by the press secretary. Probably. Or maybe not, I don't know if Lee Min-ho authorized..."
"I see," the Wad-Princess cut her off. "Grant us full access to all the center's systems, all documents, data storage, laboratories, staff offices and their computers, work phones, tablets, and other devices. Send Murad lists of all SS employees who worked from the 10th to the 13th, as well as data on who took vacations or sick leave, when, and where to."
"Yes, ma'am... Your Highness," Gemma mumbled. "Will you be interviewing the staff?"
"We will have several conversations. This office suits me, so we will work here. Block access to this floor for all staff... except you. Access to the accounts of Ibrahim ibn-Ali Al-Shufrir, Maria Fialkovskaya, and Philippe Anger must also be blocked for everyone."
"Alright, ma'am, Your Highness."
"You may address me as 'Effendi,'" the princess said; her tone softened somewhat, and she asked: "When did you last see them?"
"I don't exactly socialize with the center's directors often," Nightbird grumbled. "The deities rarely descend to our level. Shufrir has a separate small elevator to his office, Fialkovskaya and Anger were almost always in their labs."
"Well, that's clear. There's no one in Shufrir's reception area. Where's the secretary?"
"She quit a couple of months ago, we're still looking for a replacement. Were looking."
"Excellent. Occupy the reception area. Move your office there by lunchtime today."
"Alright, Ma... Effendi," Gemma said submissively, though everything inside her seethed at the tone the princess used to appoint her as a glorified errand girl.
"Arrange for coffee and tea. You may go, you have much to do."
The gesture with which the Wad-Princess dismissed her was as insulting as everything else. Nightbird, envying the bosses who had run away and spared themselves this humiliation, left the office and took her personal phone from her pocket. She could allow herself that, since no one could see her here.
The screen showed a message from Eric: "So how's it going?" Gemma sighed. She couldn't tell him anything.
"Seems okay for now," she wrote and, after a brief struggle with temptation, added: "Please buy pistachio ice cream and calamari rings. It's going to be a long day."
"Alright. And a large vanilla milkshake, a couple of liters, yeah, babe?"
"Better make it a bucket," Gemma replied, stuffed the phone back in her pocket, and pressed the elevator button.
One question nagged at her — why was the disappearance of embryos, documents, and the directors of the MT perinatal center being investigated by the Sultan's daughter, and not by agents from the Corporation's Inquiry Service?
***
"Poor thing," said the Wad-Prince with a chuckle. "So frightened and angry. It's a shame we can't reassure her."
Murad snorted loudly. For the administrator girl, everything certainly looked straightforward: the bosses, worried about their own skins, had run off, and she'd been made the scapegoat, left alone to deal with problems she simply couldn't handle. No wonder Saida Nightbird sparked like a live wire at the slightest touch.
"How's your neuromodulator?" asked AlNilam, unbuttoning his musht. After the incident on Alviont, the old device had failed, and Murad hadn't quite gotten used to the replacement yet.
"All's well, Effendi," he replied silently.
"If you don't start using it, you'll never get used to it," the Wad-Prince remarked disapprovingly.
"As you say, Effendi," the Yakzan said aloud. The modulated voice still seemed somehow off to him, even though the voice recording for modulation in the new device had been loaded from the archive.
AlNilam tossed the musht onto a chair and, with the dexterity born of years of practice, removed the tagellan without disturbing a single fold. Effendi was short and deceptively slender — under the traditional garments hid a flexible, strong, muscular body. A pale, androgynous face framed by a mop of thick, wildly curly jet-black hair — a fine nose with a distinctive curve, high, sharp cheekbones, a sharply defined chin... Would Nightbird still mistake him for a woman now?
"Murad, stop. I can't work when you look at me like that."
"My apologies, Effendi," the Yakzan opened the case and began setting up the equipment on the table. After incidents like the one on Alviont, it was always much harder for him to quell his anxiety.
"Murad," a narrow white palm rested on his sleeve. Al-Fayyaz quickly blinked, dispelling the memory — the lattice of scars and burns covering his prince's arm.
"Murad," Irfan repeated softly. "I'm fine. All's well. Here, look," he pressed the Yakzan's palm to his own cheek. The skin was smooth again, without scars or charred fabric. On the injured cheek, a dark, soft fuzz was already sprouting, just like above the upper lip — neither a beard nor a mustache had grown on his prince's face since he was sixteen.
"Yes, it's fine," said the Yakzan. "But he didn't even give you a month to rest."
"Well, what can you do," Irfan patted his hand. "Father and his most exalted orders. You know how it is."
Murad just sighed and sat down at Shufrir's work terminal. Who else could the Sultan have sent here, to ensure that what the center director had been doing beyond his official duties didn't accidentally come to light...
"So, what do we have here," the Wad-Prince said businesslike, took the remote, and turned on the huge half-wall panel. A photo of Shufrir, smiling with all thirty-two teeth and shaking hands with Emir Al Bayez, appeared on the screen. "Hmm, a center director with a bit of a megalomania complex."
AlNilam took a laptop, connected it to the panel, and displayed three brief dossiers on it. Besides Ibrahim ibn-Ali Al-Shufrir, head of the MT perinatal center, both his deputies had also vanished without a trace. The first deputy, Philippe Anger, was the head of the genetic engineering lab, and the second — Maria Fialkovskaya — headed the "Bioronica" department, a Corporation division that produced approved biomechanoids, including the branding devices for beings.
"Interesting," said the Wad-Prince, "were the embryos ordinary, or those?"
"Can they be distinguished somehow?"
"Not by the documents — that's exactly what Shufrir was working on here. But what worries my father the most is the theft of the files."
"Did he say what's in them, Effendi?"
"No," AlNilam hissed. "That's the point. It's an archive with documents, audio, and video, but I don't know what exactly we're looking for. Whether the thieves know what they took — that's an extremely interesting question."
"No kidding," thought Al-Fayyaz. Was the whole thing staged just for the archive?
Murad placed his laptop next to the terminal and entered Shufrir's account password. All the logins and passwords of the missing persons had been sent to them that morning, along with the surveillance footage — they'd barely had time to review it. The Sultan had urgently pulled them out of Brianta, where the Wad-Prince was recovering, so they literally jumped on the first stream-train to Tar-Mariat and arrived today at five in the morning local time.
On the terminal's desktop, instead of a wallpaper, was another photo of the center director — this time he was shaking hands with the Governor-General of Tar-Mariat, beaming with a smug smile. The Yakzan involuntarily wondered what the wallpaper was like in Shufrir's apartment.
Murad opened the email, calendar, and work chat, noticing out of the corner of his eye that AlNilam had pulled up the surveillance system data on the panel and was reviewing the same moment he'd spotted that morning. Exactly at 23:59 on the night of June 11-12, the images on all cameras flickered for a fraction of a second, and at 2:00, the flicker repeated. This could only be noticed at very slow playback — or if you were a being. And such flickering indicated that someone had hacked the surveillance system, after which the cameras had shown the Security Service a fake feed for two hours.
"This was a very meticulously planned robbery," AlNilam murmured. "How long do you think they spent just preparing the hack?"
"Depends on where it was executed from. If from the inside, they could have started planting their agent in the center a year, two, or even more ago."
"Rake through the IT department. Keep your eyes on them until they figure out where the fake recording came from."
"And the interrogations, Effendi?"
"I'll handle them myself, as soon as they bring us tea and coffee. Right, let's see from the morning..."
Murad returned to studying Shufrir's terminal. On his last working day, the center director had mainly been signing documents for employee advance payments, reviewing reports, and arguing with HR about them still not finding him a secretary. Shufrir had to make his own coffee, which he found extremely outrageous.
Shufrir had access to almost all employee account data, and Murad had already opened Philippe Anger's account when the Wad-Prince suddenly exclaimed:
"Look at this, this is interesting!"
Al-Fayyaz looked at the panel. The parking lot footage was open. The prince clicked the menu, entered Shufrir's car number in the search, and the footage immediately rewound to the director's first appearance at the center.
"Look," said AlNilam, "here he arrives for work at 10:48 on June 11. Then he apparently had lunch at the center, because the next time his car is recorded leaving is at 8:36 in the evening. And then suddenly," the Wad-Prince paused the footage on the third found fragment, "Shufrir returned to the center at ten to twelve."
Murad walked over to the panel. The freeze-frame clearly showed Shufrir's face behind the windshield. He looked very displeased.
"I'll request the log from his work phone," said Murad. "Though they could have contacted him on his personal one too. And the others?"
"Fialkovskaya left at 6:47, and her car never returned. But Philippe Anger, it seems, lived at work. He arrived at 7:16, and that's it," the prince clicked on footage from another camera. "Here's his car. Until midnight, when the footage was replaced, it stood in the parking lot. Very, very interesting. I think I'll start by examining Anger's personal file."
"Internal espionage?"
"Could be anything. We don't know yet who this is directed against — the Corporation or my father. Though some radicals successfully combine hatred for 'MT' with hatred for governments. So it could be industrial espionage, a plot against my father, or a terrorist stunt with equal probability."
"In that case, these are very well-funded terrorists."
"Which brings us back to MT's or the Sultan's competitors. The competitors have plenty of money to fund some group's activities. Though if a dozen terrorist groups pooled their resources..."
The terminal emitted a beep, followed by Nightbird's voice:
"Tea and coffee for Her Highness. Please open the door."
A short chuckle escaped AlNilam. Murad gave his lord and master a reproachful look:
"We should tell her, Effendi."
"Why? It's much more fun this way!"
For Effendi, the best part of the fun was the faces of those who'd made the mistake turning white as they imagined the punishment awaiting them for such an insult to His Highness, while said Highness thoroughly enjoyed himself.
"There's something of his father in him," thought Murad and opened the door, positioning himself so Nightbird couldn't peek into the office. Two trays hovered in the air before her — one with a glass teapot and coffeepot, the other with filled cups.
"Tea," the SS administrator said coldly. "Coffee."
The Yakzan sympathized with her: he knew well what it was like to be the odd one out. Not only had he been the biggest everywhere since birth, but the touch of Gilat blood from his maternal grandmother had given him light-brown eyes and light chestnut, reddish hair. Life in a world of fiery brunettes hadn't been easy for him.
So Murad gave Gemma a friendly smile, nudged the tray with cups towards himself, and said:
"Thank you for your care, Saida. I'll pass it on to Effendi."
Nightbird's eyes widened in astonishment, like everyone's did upon hearing his voice. But she allowed herself no comment, bowed her head slightly and with dignity, and closed the door.
The tray slid into the office and hovered over the table by the window — apparently, that's where Shufrir preferred to enjoy his cup of coffee. Murad habitually pulled back his sleeve and passed his wrist over the cups with his watch, in which he activated the poison detector. They thought for a second, then a scarlet band encircled the round display, and a message flashed: "ARSONOID!!!"
The Wad-Prince and the Yakzan stared at each other; the same thought struck them simultaneously.
"The girl," AlNilam exhaled. Murad rushed to the door.
He burst into the reception area just as Nightbird was filling a visitor's cup from the teapot on the tray. The Yakzan lunged at Gemma like a hawk, snatched the cup from her hand, and hurled the tray away. It crashed into the wall; shards of the teapot and coffeepot sprayed everywhere, and a brown-black stream of tea and coffee gushed down the white panels onto the floor. Gemma recoiled from Murad, staring at him with eyes wide with fear and shock.
"There's poison in the tea and coffee," said the Yakzan.
Nightbird shifted her gaze from him to the crumpled cup lying in a puddle of tea on the carpet and began to tremble. Suddenly, the phone in her pocket rang. Gemma jumped, grabbed the phone, but her hands were shaking so much she almost dropped it into the poisonous puddle. Murad took the shrieking device from her, put it on speaker, and a desperate female scream filled the reception area:
"Gemma! Our Dawud! He's dying! Oh, Allah... Gemma, he's dead!"
[1] Planets with similar daily and annual cycles and linked by tight production chains often prefer to synchronize their calendars for convenience (research by Prof. O. Vlasova).
[2] The prefix "Wad-" is derived from the word "wadi" (Fahti) – a dry riverbed. This signifies that the prince or princess belongs to a junior branch of the ruling family and is prohibited from marrying or having children without the Sultan's special permission.