Selta

Tergre Mainspace

The subterranean city of Upper Selta boasted one of the most diverse populations in the galaxy. It offered amnesty to criminals, anonymity to celebrities, and neutrality to the influential. On Selta, there were more laws against bounty hunters than thieves. If there was any place to leave a checkered life behind, or to find a new one, Selta was the place.

Of course, Seltan authorities wanted order and security for their visitors and their residents, so there were laws. If, for instance, a Vel mistress was to shoot her porter for wasting time, she would be subject to severe penalties for endangering the lives of those around her. But if she happened to have caused a revolution that cost the lives of thousands of people, well, that was her own business, as long as she didn’t use her insurrectionist talent on Selta. She could live in great luxury and relative security, if she had the means to sustain it.

Obscurity was even possible on Selta, where all the Council species were represented in staggering number, and even the new and reclusive Melifleurs were to be seen in secluded corners, letting their branches dance along the walls with the vibrations of a thousand feet. If you desired to disappear into a crowd, Selta had the crowd for you.

These were the three foundations of Seltan society: immunity, security, and obscurity.

Unfortunately for Basher, formerly a cop and now employed at the Spo embassy on Selta, he generally broke all three in the course of his work.Basher finally caught up with the handsome black woman in the western quadrant of Upper Selta, Section 42. He’d been following her trail for a week, and though he'd tried to be discreet, he wasn’t certain if she was aware of having a police tail or not.

She appeared genuinely surprised and happy to see another human in this alien warren, just as any real human might have been. Basher sized her up again: good-looking, tall, expressive features, and most probably a Rik with a human body. The technical term was FAC, Fugitive Alien Counterfeit, but Basher shortened it to fake.

If so, he gave her full credit for being a good actress. He supposed there was the slightest chance, maybe 0.5%, that she truly was what she seemed – a savvy, entrepreneurial human who’d managed to get off planet before the Spo locked it down. But he doubted it.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Basher said. “I’d love to hear how you ended up out here.”

“Of course.” She showed her teeth in a dazzling white smile against her chocolate skin.

She led him into a Spo eatery. The light was bright, the smell antiseptic, like the Spo. Green deathglass gleamed on the walls; a high-end kind of place, Basher thought.

“Two scratchwet drinks,” she told the server, “with Species Set 4 supplements.”

She turned to Basher. “Those’ll only keep a lid on the indigestion, but scratchwets are worth it. The closest thing I’ve found to a real European microbrew.”

Basher paused in surprise. That was a lot of detail for a fake, and she spoke with a decided British accent.

“Are you from Europe?” he asked. This was Test One. He couldn’t arrest this woman until she gave him sufficient cause to doubt her identity. Basher had a very tenuous contract with the Seltan officials, and if they felt he was abusing his power, he was gone.

So this was the first test. If she didn’t realize that northern Europe had been more or less vaporized seven years ago when the Large Hadron Collider was bombed, she was definitely a fake. Most likely she did know, however, if she knew enough to talk her way around drinks.

“I am from England, but I was spending my gap year in South America when the Hadron explosion occurred.”

“Wow, lucky you, then. And how did you end up here?”

 “I was offered a job by the Vel. Of course, I knew nothing about the Vel then, but you know what things were like. The tsunamis from the explosion and then the Spo taking over; everyone was crazy. The Vel offered to take us far away... so I went.”

She took their drinks from the server at the bar and carried them to a small table. The glasses were matte black, the drink frothed just below the rim.

“Cheers,” she said, and they clinked glasses.

Basher pretended to sip, letting the froth touch his lips, but no more. The fakes were fond of a poison called sasoikeo, and he wouldn’t take the chance. He’d only been hunting fakes on Selta for a couple years now, and already he knew of three agents who’d been poisoned.

Her story about the Vel was possible. He’d been informed that a few fast-acting aliens had come to Earth before the Spo locked it down. Culture was money, in the galaxy, and a few aliens who’d been in the vicinity of Earth when things went south decided to make some money on Earth culture before it was widely available.

“Mmm,” the woman said in her rich voice, savoring the drink. “And what about you?”

“Same sort of thing. I did security for the Spo generals on Earth for a few years, and got offered a private security gig with the Spo out here. Our trial was amazing, wasn’t it?” This was Test 2. If this woman was a Rik with a stolen human body, she might display some emotion about the trial. The Rik had tried their darnedest to get humans judged as non-sentient animals, but the trial went against them. It was pure luck that the Rik hadn’t lost everything. The human representative, a kid named Sam Locklear, had decided the Rik might be more useful as an indentured species than a desperate enemy, and so they’d achieved a sort-of half status.

Basher had caught one Rik who ground his teeth and spat at the mere mention of the trial.

The woman’s eyes widened innocently. “Quite amazing. And what did you do before the Spo and the explosion?”

Damn, she was good. Basher half-believed her... but he had to be sure.

“I was a homicide detective. NYPD.” He put the drink to his lips again, letting foam touch his mouth. He couldn’t do this for long, or it would become obvious that he wasn’t drinking.

“Do you plan to go back to Earth?” he asked her. “The Spo have a deadline to pull out, and the economy is already picking up, with galactic money starting to trickle in. Do you have any family waiting for you?” Fourth test.

“No. My family lived in Surrey, but they were all...they all died.”

“Sorry. It’s hard to think back that far, isn’t it? Seems like another life.” He faked another sip. “No Spo, no aliens, just going to work, eating out, finding new house slaves sometimes...how many slaves did your family have?”

He asked the outrageous question blandly, with a nostalgic smile. Slavery, or indentured servitude, was not uncommon in the galaxy...

“Well...” she faltered for the first time, and took a long drink. “Just a few. Didn’t seem important at the time, did it?”

Bingo. Basher put his hand on the gun holstered under his jacket.

“You’re under arrest– ”

She grabbed his drink and splashed it in his face. Basher instinctively shut his eyes. The warm liquid hit his face and ran down his neck and chest.

He was on his feet before the glass hit the ground, but she was already at the door.

That was fast, Basher thought, sprinting after her. But where would she go? Selta was a closed moon. He knew where her ship was berthed. The best she could hope was to lose him and somehow sneak back to her ship when he'd given up.

As a world, Selta consisted of two huge cities: Upper Selta and Lower Selta. Upper Selta connected to space through the ship yards; it was the touristy, transient, ambassadorial city. Lower Selta was deeper in the moon's core, had no exit to the shipyards, and consisted mainly of settled Seltans, who lived there year 'round. Lower Selta was connected to Upper Selta by a cabal of high speed trains and transports. Basher thought of it as the Chunnel. If this fake got on the Chunnel, she'd be literally burying herself deeper in trouble. However, it'd be harder to find her in Lower Selta, which would be annoying. It’d be better to catch her before she managed to bury herself down there, if that was her plan.

The Spo café was at an intersection of four separate streets which met together like a starburst meaning she could have headed in eight different directions. Nice plan, but there were several Melifleur trees swaying violently to his right – he headed that way. He ran through the huge potted trees into a street side bakery and caught sight of the woman vaulting over a table about fifty yards further down the boulevard. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him. Immediately she ducked into a shop selling crystal souvenirs. Basher assumed there’d be a back way out of it so he immediately detoured into the bakery on the right. Sure enough there was a delivery street behind this set of businesses. Hurtling through the back door he turned left again and spotted her further down the street. Damn. She was fast. She was gaining ground and she was heading in the general direction of the Chunnel. Suddenly he heard a beep behind him and had to jump out of the way of a delivery van.

Delivery vans, Basher had decided, were basically the universal symbol of commercially-based economies and they looked pretty much the same throughout the known universe. Basher jumped on the ledge in the back and grabbed onto the handhold. The delivery driver glanced in his side screen and Basher flashed his badge at him, motioning him to keep going. The van helpfully sped up. Basher leaned out, hoping to catch sight of the fake. He almost missed it. He was glancing through the open back doors of shops and seeing snatches of the foot traffic beyond, back on the main boulevard. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the movement above and behind – a leg disappearing onto a roof.

Even in underground Selta people often had roofs. They were useful for security, and you needed a ceiling to keep in or keep out light in the larger excavations. Basher jumped forward onto a hanging ladder several stores beyond the Rik, scrambled almost to the top and peeked over, his gun close. The fake was jogging past him. He gauged the distance and leapt out at it, tackling it to the grooved metal roof directly in front of it.

Oops. It yelped and jackknifed to give him a swift kick in the head before planting a foot on him and jumping over.

Basher staggered back to his feet shaking his head to clear the stars away. The fake was running over gloomy rooftops, sticking to the spots of light created by the maintenance lighting. Every now and then it leaped over something. Basher followed it carefully. It seemed to know what it was doing up here. After fifteen seconds he started thinking something was wrong, it wasn’t evading him, just running. He was just wondering why it didn’t get out of sight, when suddenly it was.

He kept running to the spot he’d last seen it – ah. A transparent hatch thingy. The hatch led into a private estate. Basher paused for a second to think. Most estates in Selta were purchased before the internal structures were excavated, so they descended several levels down allowing owners to have entrances on several “streets”. He could get in trouble for entering a private residence and some of these owners made Earthly dictators look welcoming and gregarious. On the other hand, pretty much everybody hated the body-stealing Rik. Trespass it was.

He jumped into the hatch (why did they have this here anyway?), and found himself facing locked doors. He turned around.

Immediately behind him a private spinner surrounded by an elegant curving staircase gave access to floors below. He chose the seemingly delicate spinner, sliding and spinning down to the next level. On the next level the door was wide open, and a Merith dressed as a maid was yelling into the street. Basher dashed past her and found that the fake had led him to a tunnel for lower class staff heading to work.

Luckily for him it had picked lunchtime and was caught in the crowd. There it was; barely thirty yards away. He shouted for people to grab her in several languages, but no one did. They kept an even distance from her.

She was getting away. He pushed and shoved harder through the crowd, “Let me through! I can arrest it!”

The fake managed to get to a side tunnel and started running again. Basher got to the tunnel and as he started jogging down the gentle slope, he got out his gun again.

The tunnel led to a courtyard garden surrounded by an open air market. This one was a dead end. He could tell because the fake had its back to a maintenance door, and a gun pointed at him. It also had a hostage. A lot of other alien bystanders were crouching on the floor.

“Stop right there, pig,” said the fake woman.

“At least you remember police-slander correctly,” Basher said, warily approaching.

“I don’t know about that. I just think you’re a pig.” It laughed.

“I’m not the greedy one. Most people are happy with the body they’re given, they don’t have to steal another.” He took a small step closer, a little to his left.

“Nobody’s happy with the body they’re given. Certainly not Leticia. She had a lot of work done. Rik have just perfected the art of self-improvement.”

“Who’s Leticia?” Another step while dreading the answer.

“My donor.” The fake started to smile slowly.

Basher hated it when they told him the name.

He was close enough for a round kick to the hand holding the gun. Most fakes didn’t watch the feet. The gun went off, spewing an arc of fire that warmed his leg, but completely missed her victim. He followed with a punch to her gut, and she doubled over, but somehow maintained her hold on the gun.

Basher twisted the fake’s arm behind her back and slammed her against the wall. Her grip loosened, and Basher was finally able to pry the gun from her fingers. On Selta, guns were supposed to be limited to security, and that clearly worked as well here as it did on Earth.

Other aliens began to stir from the floor, where most of them had thrown themselves when she drew her weapon. Basher felt like he’d chased her across half of Selta.

Basher held her arms, forced her down to the floor and put a knee in her back while he handcuffed her.

“You – you are not allowed to attack another sentient life form...” she sputtered.

“Yeah, too bad,” Basher said. “You should have gone back to the Rik planet when you had the chance. On Selta, you're in my jurisdiction."

Technically she was still a beautiful woman, but now that he knew for sure it was a Rik inside her, Basher had no pity. They’d been stealing human bodies for years, before humans even knew aliens existed. Now that the Spo were in charge of Earth, they were hunting down the fakes. If a fake surrendered, they’d be sent back peaceably to their planet... or to the new Earthly moon colony for Rik prisoners. But if they didn’t surrender and continued to pose as humans, they were liable for prosecution for the bodies they’d taken and the people they killed. It wouldn’t give this poor woman, Leticia, her life back, but the Rik who took her body should be punished.

Basher pulled her to her feet and searched her, not wanting to touch her any more than necessary to satisfy himself that she didn’t have any more nasty surprises for him. At least not within hand’s reach.

The alien she’d been using as a shield had stumbled away, but now came back towards them. Basher held up his license.

“I hope you were not injured. This is a criminal of the Council, and I will take her directly to the Spo embassy for processing.”

 The Merith blinked her one large eye and made a weird expression, even for an alien with a beak. Then she leaned forward and spit on Basher.

“Hey!” Basher said. “Get away from me.”

“Shwaa crept,” the alien spat, “Rik scum.”

Basher pulled his gun and the alien made a rude smell, but went her way.

The fake laughed and Basher resisted the urge to slap her.

Instead, he pulled out his tablet and called his Spo partner. “I caught the fake,” he said. “But I’m pretty far from you now. Can you come pick us up?”

“Indeed. I will come in the car.”

Basher found his location on a map of Selta and told the Spo where to come.

“You traveled far, even on two feet,” his partner said, impressed. The Spo were a little hung up on being the only four-footed aliens.

“Yes, I did travel far, and I enjoyed the journey and all, but can you skip the small talk and get here quick?” Basher said. “The other aliens seem to think we’re both Rik and they’re not happy that we just drew weapons in their marketplace.”

Basher stuck the tablet back in his jacket pocket and dragged the fake to the nearest hall dedicated to vehicular traffic. He stepped over the warning line which vibrated against his feet, and waited against the wall.

Ground-cars whizzed by, some probably going 40 or 50 mph, but with very little exhaust. Basher didn’t know much about alien technology, except for the few Spo things he’d been issued, but he did know that there was some freaking complicated air filtration system to keep this giant moon from turning into one deadly ball of methane and carbon dioxide.

The fake stared at him, a frustrated look in her eyes. If this had been a human run down back on Earth, Basher wouldn’t have stood next to rushing traffic with a desperate woman. She might have tried to escape or even commit suicide by throwing herself into the narrow, contained highway. The Rik were almost incapable of killing themselves, however, which simplified things for Basher. They just weren’t the type to sacrifice their lives for anything, even themselves.

Eventually the car arrived, and Basher shoved the fake into the secured back seat. They would take her back to the Spo embassy, where she would be locked up until she could be prosecuted. They had eleven fakes already locked up in their tiny containment cells, so it was past time to send a ‘shipment’ of criminals. They’d suspended the shipments for now, however, as they were currently holding all Rik indefinitely. The Spo space station that orbited Earth had been attacked, and apparently the main suspects were Rik. Basher had been given permission to begin investigating the sabotage, but as he’d been told very little about it, he didn’t have much to work with. Soon there would be more humans from Earth coming to assist him, and he hoped they would provide a little more information. He was looking forward to having some company, so long as they were competent investigators.

As his partner drove them back to the embassy, they passed through one of the central shipping caverns. A huge cruiser must have come in while they were away. The elevators leading to and from the belly of the cruiser were bringing hundreds of crew down into Selta, who were now crowding all the connecting tunnels.

Something caught Basher’s attention, from the corner of his eye. It almost looked like... well, maybe it was nothing. He craned his neck to look behind. Yes, he definitely caught a glimpse of straight, human legs, and shiny, black hair.

“Damn,” Basher said. “You’d better let me out here. I think I saw another one.” He groaned as he got out of the car, his muscles stiff after chasing the last Rik.

This Rik would no doubt have another unlikely story to explain her presence on Selta. The Rik just didn’t seem to grasp that there were no other humans out here. In a few years, when humanity began to disperse, Basher’s job would be a lot harder. But for now, any human who showed up on a ship not from Earth was guilty until